


Before the Gates of Heaven

by Miniatures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blow Jobs, Dark Gabriel, Drama & Romance, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Romance, Sabriel - Freeform, canon divergence after Hammer of the Gods, hints of destiel - Freeform, yes have some smut ya horny bastards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:39:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miniatures/pseuds/Miniatures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>--“I’m doing what our Father did all those eons ago. I’m creating a Devil." […] Michael smiled and crouched beside his brother. "And now, Gabriel… now it’s time for you to fall.”--</p><p>Gabriel manages to outmanoeuvre Lucifer in "Hammer of the Gods" and kills him, effectively stopping Michael's plan to make Paradise on Earth. As punishment, Michael poisons his Grace and casts him out of Heaven to take Lucifer's place as the world's Ultimate Evil. He just wasn't counting on Gabriel turning to his human allies for help… or the effect that the Winchesters have on fallen angels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. evil in the air and thunder in the sky

Lucifer knew that his powers would be dulled so long as he resided in a decaying vessel, but he still loathed himself for not noticing the angel enter the room. Gabriel—and _of course_ it was Gabriel—knocked him across the room with a sharp blow of concentrated will, away from the Hindu goddess on the floor.

 _Sentiment will be the death of you, brother,_ he thought as he skidded into the wall. _And for so low a creature, too._

He staggered to his feet and saw Gabriel, the archangel clad in a short, unassuming body.

“Luci,” the angel half-sang, “I’m home.”

Lucifer stalked towards his brother and the goddess with a roll of his shoulders. _Fools will pay._ Gabriel raised his blade _._

“Not this time,” he said, and the poor thing looked so _tired,_ Lucifer almost felt contrite. Almost.

Gabriel helped Kali to her feet and held her close. “Guys,” he called, “get her out of here.”

The Winchesters— _there’s Sam beautiful Sam my Sam_ —poked up their heads, shuffled over, walked Kali to the door. Gabriel moved so that he stood between them and his brother until they were out of harm’s way.

“Over a _girl,_ ” Lucifer sneered, and he hoped that petty goddess heard him. “Gabriel, really. I mean I knew you were _slumming_ , but…” he hissed sharply, “I hope you didn’t catch anything.”

Gabriel’s face softened a moment. He gave a sad smile.

“Lucifer, you’re my brother and I love you. But you are a great big bag of dicks.”

“What did you just say to me?”

“Look at yourself!” Oh, yes; there was iron on his tongue now. “Boo hoo! Daddy was mean to me so I’m gonna smash up all his toys!”

Lucifer set his vessel’s teeth.

“Watch your tone,” he said evenly.

“Play the victim all you want, but you and me? We know the truth.” Gabriel met his eye, and there was a spark of defiance there that Lucifer had never seen him wear before. “Dad loved you best. More than Michael,” his voice softened, “more than me. Then he brought the new baby home and… you couldn’t handle it. So all this is just a great big _temper tantrum!”_

Lucifer regarded him coldly. Thoughts of the various ways he could torture that small, lithe body ran through his head. He imagined running knives across Gabriel’s skin, scorching him with holy oil, bringing him to his knees and burning the audacity out of him. _Hurt him, make him see, make him know me, respect me, love me again._ He was calm as river water, currents of rage roiling under a veneer of stillness.

Gabriel raised his blade, and Lucifer saw miserable fury in his brother’s eyes.

“Time to grow up,” he said.

“Gabriel, if you’re doing this for Michael—”

“Screw him! If he were standing here, I’d shiv his ass too.”

Lucifer scoffed. “You _disloyal—”_

“Oh, I’m loyal,” his brother said. “To them.”

“Who? These… so-called gods?”

“To _people,_ Lucifer. People.”

Lucifer’s heart ached. How could his brother, once so brilliant and pure, have fallen so low? To champion the flawed, the filthy, the belly-crawling denizens of this _cesspool_ their Father had made? Every inch of this world teemed with rot, and all its brutal creatures reeked of death. The ordained vessels still clung to some scrap of divinity, but beyond that… what was worth saving? Lucifer would lure all of God’s creatures away from Him, suck them down to burn in hellfire before they could further pollute Heaven with their frail and sickly souls. And he would burn Gabriel too, for his pathetic allegiance to them.

“So you’re willing to _die,_ ” he said, trying to rein in his fury, his heartbreak, “for a pile of cockroaches. Why?”

There was a smile in Gabriel’s eyes. “Because Dad was right,” he said. “They _are_ better than us.”

“They are _broken,”_ Lucifer cried, unable to hold back. “Flawed! Abortions!”

_Why can’t he see, why can’t he see how foul, how low, how they pale against our glory? Even now, wearing corpses, we shine as gods among them._

“Damn right they’re flawed,” Gabriel said. He took a shuddering breath, and there was a hitch in his voice when next he spoke. “But a lot of them try. To do better. To _forgive._ And you should see the Spearmint Rhino.”

The Devil looked down. Gabriel didn’t know—couldn’t know—Lucifer couldn’t forgive. He’d left Heaven of his own volition, a coward—at least Lucifer had fought! And he had loved, and he had lost, lost his Father’s heart to these _insects._

_They try? They try but they cannot be better. The best of them are still less than the worst of us, brother._

“I’ve been riding the pine a long time,” Gabriel went on, “but I’m in the game now. And I’m not on your side, or Michael’s.” His lips twitched, the smallest, quietest smile. “I’m on theirs.”

They looked at each other a moment. Lucifer felt something stir behind him, and he knew, he _knew_ that Gabriel meant it, that he was too far gone in his sympathy for the filth in which they stood. He thought of Heaven, of his true form, and Gabriel’s, of will and power and thought concentrated in blazes of light. He remembered games and quiet nights with his brothers, remembered how Gabriel loved to make them laugh.

“Brother,” he whispered, “don’t make me do this.”

Gabriel looked at him sadly. “No one makes _us_ do anything.”

The presence behind him crept closer. _Brother, no. Let this go, let us reign, let things be the way they were again._

“Gabriel,” he said, and yes, the presence was right there, buzzing against his vessel’s back. He couldn’t stop it now. _So be it._  “I know you think you’re doing the right thing… but I know where your heart truly lies.”

He raised his eyebrows at the Gabriel before him. In one swift move he turned, caught the wrist of the true archangel that stood behind him and drove Gabriel’s raised blade into his gut.

“Here,” he said.

He tried not to hate himself as he looked down at his little brother, at his expression of disbelief and pain. _Should have known, should have known you couldn’t beat me._

The Gabriel in his arms choked, clutched at the handle of the angel blade buried in his mortal flesh.

Then he… flickered.

It occurred to Lucifer, as Gabriel thrust his blade into his back, that he probably shouldn’t have underestimated an archangel.

 “I’m sorry, Lucifer,” Gabriel murmured in his ear, and his voice was thick with tears. The illusion before them dissolved in a puff of smoke. “I’m _so, so sorry…”_

Hell had tempered Lucifer in its image, but he was still an angel. He burned out like one when Gabriel twisted the blade in his back, blaring light from his eyes and mouth and _screaming—_ but he did more than that, too. His flesh blackened and his light blazed bright, and the building shook, crackled white-hot with the raw power he exuded. Suddenly the room was filled as Lucifer’s vessel crumbled into ash and his true form was unleashed, light and chaos straining against the building’s confines, shattering glass and splintering wood and cracking plaster.

Gabriel thanked all the gods—his Father included—that he’d sent the Winchesters away, because this would have _definitely_ killed them.

And then, as quickly as it had happened, it was over. The room was in shambles, and all that remained of the Devil, of Lucifer, of God’s Favourite and Gabriel’s brother, was a pair of wing-shaped scorch marks on the floor.

—

A few miles down the road from _Elysian Fields_ , the Impala was parked on the lip of a ditch. Dean had pulled over when Kali made it clear that she was not, in fact, omnipotent, and actually did need to figure out where she was going.

“I can’t just _flit_ away from this body, that’s not how I work,” she explained with a quirk of her lip. “My kind reincarnates. We exist apart from our human forms, but we are still bound to them so long as they are alive. And sadly, that comes with some limitations.”

“So you can’t, uh, teleport or whatever?” Dean asked, apprehensive. Sam knew the thought of letting a goddess associated with death and destruction kick around the Impala wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

“Of course I can. But I need to get my bearings first, and I can’t do that while the car is moving. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She opened the door, but before she got out she turned to the brothers once more and in a gentler tone said: “If you see Gabriel again… let him know that I’m going to _kill_ him.”

And with that she was gone.

The brothers sat a moment in silence, before Sam asked, quietly: “Do you think he made it out okay?”

Dean shrugged. “He’s a scrappy guy, Gabriel. Not to mention the dude’s a frigging _archangel_. But, uh...”

“… So is Lucifer,” Sam finished. “Yeah.”                                       

Sam stared at his hands. Most of him itched to run, to put as much distance between himself and Lucifer as possible. But a part of him wanted to tell Dean to turn the car around. He felt alarmingly crappy, he realized, having left Gabriel to face the Devil alone. They didn’t owe him shit, not after everything he’d put them through, but he’d still stood up when it counted. He was facing down _Lucifer,_ in no small part for their sakes. He may have been a manipulative, brutal, thoughtless bastard, but he didn’t deserve…

The younger Winchester realized that his brother had yet to start the car. Dean was studying his face, a frown creasing his brow.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

—

Gabriel didn’t have time to question Michael’s reasons for summoning him, nor the speed with which he did so. One moment he was standing over Lucifer’s remains, trying hard to fight the bile rising in his throat, and the next he was in Heaven for the first time in centuries.

It was a piece of Heaven designed by Michael; that much was certain. Only Michael’s ego could justify the cavernous marble-and-gold throne room. The archangel in question sat atop a raised dais not far from where Gabriel materialized, on a chair carved from the trunk of a sycamore. _Wow. Affected humility ill-befits you, brother,_ Gabriel thought, and made sure to think loudly. Michael did the angel equivalent of an eye-roll.

“And sarcasm ill-befits _you,_ Gabriel,” he drawled.

“Agree to disagree.”

Michael gave a long-suffering sigh and leveled a tight smile at his younger brother. “I believe congratulations are in order. It seems we can finally add _fratricide_ to your list of accomplishments. Bravo.”

“Oh, you saw that? How nice of you to check in on me, Michael! Really, I’m touched.”

“Hm. And I suppose you think you did well to stop Lucifer, do you?”

“Didn’t I? Oh, right, I forgot. Luci’s little fit was your ticket to world domination, wasn’t it? Crap,” he clicked his tongue, “I’m _sorry.”_

“Damn right you’re sorry.” Michael’s voice was dangerously low. He stood and descended the dais, stopping inches from Gabriel and looming over him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve cost us?”

Gabriel glared at him. “I stopped a war.”

“You stopped _nothing!”_ Michael screamed. “All you’ve done is remove Lucifer from the playing field. And now we have no _cause,_ nothing to rally against, no reason for humanity to side with us over the legions of Hell!”

His brother raised an eyebrow. “Well fuck, Michael, if your only selling point is that you aren’t Satan, maybe you should worry less about what I’ve done and more about your awful campaign strategies.”

Tendrils of power wove around Gabriel and the next thing he knew he was suspended above Michael. His brother smiled wickedly up at him as the tendrils tightened, constricting angelflesh until Gabriel was gasping for relief.

“Have you ever wondered why our Father allowed Lucifer to rule Hell after casting him out?” Michael asked calmly. “It was to unite us. Good cannot exist without evil, after all. And the existence of Hell, of Lucifer… it was a ferocious evil to combat an even fiercer force for good. Our Father did this, Gabriel, to make us loathe the very idea of disobedience, rather than simply fearing the consequence.

“And now that we’ve lost our common enemy,” he went on, “what do you think will happen to Heaven? When word gets out that all it took to take down the Devil was a mildly clever ruse and a deserter’s blade? I won’t be able to control them anymore. Heaven will fall apart, and all of God’s creations will be caught in the crossfire. Already humanity has perverted the gifts our Father gave them—think of what will happen when the demons run rampant and we angels fight unchecked among them? The world will end in fire and blood, and after it goes there will be no paradise. Only pain.”

Gabriel was lowered until Michael was eye-level with his collarbone. The elder angel nosed his brother’s neck, grazing crackle-dry lips across his skin. If he had been able to speak, or make any sound other than short, ragged breaths, Gabriel probably would have made some sort of crack about leaving the incestuous subtext to the Winchester boys.

“But we can stop it, brother,” Michael murmured, his words tickling Gabriel’s flesh. “We can save Heaven, make the Earth pure again. All I need is for you to keep still…”

Then Michael found a soft spot and _bit._

Angel teeth can be sharp when they need to, and Gabriel cried out in pain as Michael’s sunk into his throat. Something pulsed through him and then sharp, icy pain shook his body like a bolt of lightning.

The archangel screamed.

Something was shattering within him, something deep and old and vital. He felt as if he were being ripped to pieces, slowly, agonizingly slowly… as if he were being scourged from the inside out. He was alight with cold fire and he was _breaking—_

Then Michael stepped away, and the pain subsided. Whatever had been holding Gabriel in the air disappeared, and he collapsed to the floor in a trembling heap of frayed nerves.

“Wh-what… what did you _do_ to me?”

Michael licked traces of his brother’s Grace from his lips. “What needed to be done,” he answered flatly.

The archangel looked up, saw nothing but cold in Michael’s eyes. He tried to match it, though he guessed the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he felt like he’d just been flayed alive.

“So,” he panted, “you got what you w-wanted, huh? You took… my Grace? Gotta say… I th-thought the experience’d involve a lot less… n-necking.”

“Took your Grace?” Michael laughed. “Oh, Gabriel, I didn’t take anything from you. Rather, I _gave_ you something. Call it a gift. A little something to help you on your way… after all, even Lucifer got to keep his power when he was cast out.”

“S-so that’s it? You’re… casting me out?”

“I’m doing what our Father did all those eons ago. I’m creating a Devil.” Michael touched his lips. “You might say I’ve taken over the family business.”

Gabriel choked on a bitter laugh. “Right. Because Dad’s… _all about_ the whole pride thing. Y-yeah, Mike, I’m sure that’ll go over great.”

“Dad’s not here. _I’m_ here.” Michael smiled and crouched beside his brother. “And now, Gabriel… now it’s time for you to fall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… this is a thing I've been working on. Hopefully it works. Thanks so much to GreyMichaela for beta-ing - you give as good as you get, girl. 
> 
> Title (and all the chapter titles) shamelessly taken from the lyrics of "Bat Out of Hell" by Meat Loaf, the song that inspired this fic in spirit, if not in plot. 'Cause yeah, the song is about a drifter who dies in a road accident because he zoned out thinking about his townie girlfriend, and this very much ISN'T that. But the tone of the song spawned this, so… I'll take it. 
> 
> (On that note, go listen to "Bat Out of Hell". The whole album. It's amazing.)


	2. hit the highway like a battering ram

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is backstory, unsolicited touching, and goats.

The goats were everywhere. Baby goats. There was a swarm of them milling about Sam’s ankles, bleating and nibbling at his jeans, and Dean kept telling him _Don’t let ‘em do that, they can’t eat your pants or they’ll turn evil!  They’re ghoul-goats, Sammy._

 _Goals,_ Castiel corrected him from his position on the floor. The baby goats were walking over his face and he didn’t seem inclined to stop them. _They’re called goals, Dean. GOD, you’re so STUPID sometimes._

Sam shook his head. “I can’t stop them,” he said desperately, trying and failing to get away from the miniature stampede. “I can’t! Dean, what am I supposed to do?”

But Dean wouldn’t answer him. After a moment, Sam gave up asking and started running. It didn’t do him any good—Dean, Floor-Cas, and the goats followed him wherever he went.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, stopping to catch his breath. “There are too many damn goats!”

“You know you talk in your sleep, right, Samsquatch?”

Sam whipped around to see Gabriel standing just beyond the sea of furry bodies. The angel drew a paper bag out of thin air and grabbed a handful of candy corn out of it. He tossed the sweets over his shoulder, and the goats followed, bleating merrily.

“I don’t have much time,” Gabriel said, crossing over to Sam. They were alone now, standing in an empty field of tall, amber grass.

Sam frowned. “You… I’m dreaming, aren’t I? Dean said Cas used to visit him in dreams.”

“Yes, genius, you’re dreaming. What, was the herd of goats not enough to tip you off?”

“Then you’re really here? Uh, I mean, you’re really talking to me right now?”

“Yeah, it’s a freaking miracle. Look, Sam—”

“We thought you were dead!”

Gabriel sighed and raised his arms in a wide shrug. “Well, I’m not. Not yet, anyways. Sam, listen, where are you guys right now?”

Sam gave him the name and location of the backroad on which they’d parked. The night’s events had sufficed to put both him and Dean off sketchy motels for the moment.

Gabriel nodded, then disappeared. Sam was alone in the field for all of two seconds before he was awoken by the thud of something collapsing on the hood of the Impala.

“Shit!” Sam groaned and scrambled up off his reclined seat and out the door.

Gabriel had rolled off the hood and was now struggling to lift himself out of the mud. Sam dove to help him without a second thought, supporting the shorter man with an arm hooked under his pits. The archangel looked beyond haggard, though other than a couple of small bruises on his neck he didn’t appear to be wounded.

“Hey, Sam,” he said with a weak smile. “Long time no see, huh?”

“Gabriel?” That was Dean, emerging from the car and brushing bleary sleep from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “What the _fuck,_ you’re alive?”

“What the hell happened to you back there?” Sam hissed. “How’d you get away? Where’s Lucifer?”

“Dead.” Gabriel had a fistful of Sam’s jacket and the younger Winchester could feel the angel trembling in his arms. “He’s dead, I killed him.”

“You killed _Lucifer?”_ Dean gaped.

Sam frowned. “Does that mean… it’s all over? No Apocalypse?”

Gabriel nodded. His eyes rolled back and his head lolled on Sam’s shoulder and suddenly he was about five times heavier.

“Hey, hey, hey! Stay awake, stay awake!” Sam wrapped his other arm around the angel and carted him into the Impala, depositing his limp vessel on the reclined seat.

Gabriel made a weak, reedy noise that might have been a laugh. “Whoa. Sorry, guys—headrush.”

 Sam’s frown deepened. “Gabriel. _What happened?_ What did Lucifer do to you?”

“Pfft. He didn’t do _anything._ ”

Dean glanced at Sam, raised his eyebrows. Sam returned a shrug.

“What’re you talking about?” Dean asked.

“It wasn’t Lucifer, it was Michael. He—” Gabriel gulped, looked at the two of them for a long moment. There was something desperate and frightened in his eyes, and Sam found himself wanting to shake an answer out of the archangel. Whatever this was, they clearly weren’t out of the woods yet.

“Michael took my Grace,” Gabriel said finally. “I used the last of my juice to get to you two idiots. I’m… I’m not an angel anymore.”

 “Why would he do that?” Dean’s brow furrowed.

“Because I killed Lucifer.”

“Wait, you killed the _Devil,_ you won their fucking war for them—and they punished you? What the hell is those winged assmonkeys’ problem?”

Gabriel shook his head and made that reedy sound again. “I didn’t win shit… just cut the head off the snake. Michael still wants… still wants Earth.”

Guilt settled tight in Sam’s gut, familiar and cold. _Your fault, your fault he stayed behind—he was trying to buy you time and you took it and now he’s fallen and the angels are coming…_

“So, what,” Dean asked, “now we’re just looking at a hostile takeover?

“Basically, but that’s not… _”_ the angel—ex-angel—groaned. “I don’t know what their plan is. All Michael said was that they… they need a…” Gabriel let out a whimper, and in a smaller voice he said: “We’re all fucked.”

Then he passed out for the first time in his very long life, leaving the brothers to sit with his echo.

—

Waking up, Gabriel decided, was a horrible experience that should be put off as long and as often as possible.

He arrived at this conclusion on his third morning with the Winchesters, upon which he was jolted out of dreamless black by a calloused moose-paw on his shoulder and a gentle shake.

“Dean’s just grabbing breakfast,” Sam said, “and then we’re heading out.”

“Fuuuuuhk _off_ Sam. Mmsleeping.”

“You can sleep in the car. Get out of bed.”

Gabriel let out a long, polysyllabic moan and rolled off the mattress, crashing to the floor in a blanket burrito. “Ugh.”

Sam snorted softly. “Come on, Gabriel, we have to go. You’re the one who said it was smartest for us to keep moving.”

“I’m an idiot. Don’t listen to me.”

“Okay,” Sam threw up his hands. “You do what you gotta do. I’ll start packing the car.”

Gabriel waited until Sam was gone before he untangled himself from the motel blanket and got up off the floor.

When he had drifted back into consciousness after passing out that first night, he had assumed that Michael had lied, his Grace was really gone, and he was human after all. Which would have rendered his subsequent lie to the Winchesters an unintentional moment of honesty, something he wasn’t sure he was ready to face.

But no. As the aftereffects of Michael’s bite began to dull (not disappear, no, that would be too easy), Gabriel found he could still feel the fringes of his Grace. He still had power. It was simply… different, now. And one of those differences appeared to be that he was now capable of sleeping.

He loved it, to be honest. He didn’t dream and he didn’t fade in and out of consciousness, just slept like the dead until something jerked him out of it. That part wasn’t particularly fun, as three snappish, hateful mornings could attest, but the actual sleeping part was downright _sinful_ in how lazy it was. Hedonism for angels.

However, it also managed to serve as a reminder of what Michael had done to him. Gabriel wasn’t sure what had happened at first, but once his head began to clear he thought back to what his brother had said: _I’m creating a Devil_.

When Lucifer fell, he set a precedent. He was the first angel to abandon Heaven, the first of all of them to require punishment beyond a brief disappointed-in-you speech from dear old Dad. And their Father hadn’t known what to do with him.

The idea of Hell, a prison completely devoid of His light, had come first. God promised that any who dared follow Lucifer’s lead—and there were others, so _many_ others who wanted to—would be sent to Hell to join him. But then Lucifer realized that, with the combined Grace of the Fallen, they could just redecorate the place. For a few centuries, Hell was actually pretty awesome—a cageful of debauched angels getting drunk on ambrosia and bitching about the establishment and basically being pretty damn good to each other. But then the party began to bleed out into Earth, and everything went to shit. The Nephilim happened. People were dying left, right, and centre. Good men and women were led into sin, their souls dragged to Hell and tortured purely for the fun of it. They were doing it to spite their Father at that point, not because they hated humanity. For them, it was like tearing pages out of books to bully a bibliophile—nothing but harmless taunting.

God decided that banishment was too good for them. He needed to up the ante. And that was when He got the idea for Poisoned Grace.

It was exactly what it sounded like. The Fallen were captured and chained, their power infected, and then loosed back into Hell. God did Lucifer Himself. Those who were poisoned found their Grace slowly corrupted, warping them into creatures driven by bitterness and hate and a blind lust for destruction. It burned every last shade of grey out of them and left their souls as irretrievably black as their new eyes. Hell’s eternal party turned violent, and God had officially created Evil.

That was what Michael had done to Gabriel. He needed another Devil, another fucking scapegoat to rally the troops. And that was exactly what Gabriel would become. 

Not being in Hell would slow the process, of course. But he could only run from fate so long. The best he could hope for was to prepare the Winchesters for the worst, because God knew they were going to fight the Angelic Invasion with all they fucking had. They’d said as much, when Gabriel had told them what he knew. And when Michael finally came for him, Gabriel would make sure they hit him back as hard as they could.

—

He emerged from the motel room five minutes later, still mussed with sleep but feeling a little less like murdering everything. Sam and Dean were leaning against the Impala, tearing chunks off of what looked like two of the greasiest breakfast burgers money could buy. Dean held out a third, wrapped in wax paper and foil.

“Wansom?” he asked around a mouthful of bacon and egg.

Gabriel made a face. “Uh, _no._ ”

“C’mooon, s’good!” Dean gestured with his own burger. “Trususs, we know fr’m good.”

“Look, kid—when you have the luxury of only eating for pleasure, you learn pretty quickly about your own likes and dislikes.” Gabriel opened the car door and leaned on it one-armed, his other hand on his popped hip. “And I’ve learned that I happen to have a sweet tooth, not a _grease_ tooth.”

Sam swallowed his own mouthful. “You _do_ have to eat now, though,” he pointed out.

The angel nodded tightly. He’d almost forgotten that the boys still thought he was human. He supposed it was petty of him, lying to them like this out of shame and fear—but if he knew anything about the Winchesters, he knew that the moment they found out about his… condition… their allegiance would be over. It was barely there _now,_ only bound together by guilt, grudging respect, and duct tape. And if they knew what was about to happen to him? That’d be an angel blade leveled at his face instead of an oily sandwich.

 He sighed dramatically, reaching out to take the burger from Dean. He clutched it between two fingers, holding it out in front of him like it was radioactive. Dean rolled his eyes. Sam laughed.

Once they’d all eaten, they piled in the car and drove off. At the moment, they were still looking for leads, still trying to formulate a plan of action. As such, their routes for the past couple of days had been completely arbitrary, with Dean choosing exits and turns at random in an attempt to avoid any angelic tails they might have picked up after Gabriel’s arrival. Today was more of the same. Roadtripping with the brothers wasn’t all bad—Gabriel had to admit that Dean had an awesome, if not particularly eclectic, taste in music (the second “Pour Some Sugar on Me” started playing, Sam and Dean were enthusiastically serenaded by a one-man angelic chorus), the Impala’s backseat was surprisingly comfortable, and the scenery was nice. Still, Gabriel found himself fidgeting after the first half hour on the road, and it wasn’t long after that that he officially declared himself bored.

Their pitstops were few and far between. During one of them—which was less a full stop, more a quick parking job on the side of the highway so the Winchesters could piss over the guardrail—Dean remained outside a tad longer than Gabriel had come to see as normal. Sam popped back into shotgun and waited.

“So, uh,” Gabriel leaned forward, resting his chin on Sam’s seat. “What’s up with shorty?”

“He’s still trying to get ahold of Castiel,” Sam said, looking grave. “He’s been trying since before you found us. So far, no answer.”

“Mmm.” The angel was busy being distracted by his view of Sam’s clenching jawline and didn’t listen. He noted that the younger Winchester’s hair had grown out since he’d last seen him. It looked good. He sighed, a long and breathy exhale, forgetting that his mouth was aimed at Sam’s neck. The taller man squirmed at the sudden featherbrush of air.

“Ah—dude, what the hell?” he snapped.

Gabriel smirked. “Ticklish, Sammoose? Who would’ve guessed?”

This time he blew deliberately, hitting the nape of Sam’s neck, the hinge of his jaw… Sam squealed—fucking _squealed_ —and wriggled in his seat like a five year old.

“Cut it _out—_ Gabriel, seriously—the fuck is— _hey!”_

He ducked and writhed and the angel persisted until Sam was turned completely around, his legs draped over his headrest, his shoulders pressed against the glovebox and door. Gabriel had crawled between the passenger and driver’s seats and was half on top of him, one hand planted on the dash, the other poking at Sam’s ribs as he blew.

Sam was laughing despite himself, his face a contorted combination of irritation and helpless glee.

“Gabriel, G—hey! _Gabri—stop it! Stoh-hoh-hooop!”_

“Never,” Gabriel declared, grinning wickedly down at him. “I’m bored and you are at my _mercy,_ Winchester.”

 Sam looked terrified by the prospect. Then he narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, am I?” he growled, and the angel’s brain short-circuited because god _damn,_ that shouldn’t have been as hot as it was.

Before Gabriel could gather his temporarily scattered thoughts Sam’s long fingers were tickling the pit of his dashboard arm, and the angel yelped. He drew his arm back against his side, and, his balance thus lost, collapsed face-first on top of his quarry.

Sam’s cry of triumph became a loud _oomph_ became peals of breathless laughter. Gabriel joined him, openly giggling and absolutely not hoping that he could just stay draped over Sam for the rest of the day.

His not-hopes would have been in vain anyways, as Dean chose that instant to open the passenger door and send both of them tumbling out into the dirt.

Dean stared at them a moment, blinked once, and looked away. “I don’t even wanna know,” he muttered.

He made his way to the driver’s side, and Sam and Gabriel set about untangling themselves. Gabriel smirked a little at the sight of Sam’s flushed cheeks and dear _lord,_ the man was all limbs.

They all returned to their seats in silence. Dean started up the car, and as the engine revved, Sam asked—“What’s the word on Cas?”

Dean’s jaw clenched. “Nothing. I don’t fucking understand it, where the hell could he _be?”_

“Maybe it has something to do with the whole… Lucifer thing,” Sam suggested. He turned his head to face Gabriel. “You think that might be it?”

The angel shrugged. “That’s probably our most optimistic bet, yeah.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Dean snapped.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Just what I said.”

Neither brother seemed to want to reply to that. After a minute or two of nobody speaking, Gabriel kicked off his right shoe and sock. He slouched in his seat, sticking his leg through the cranny between the passenger seat and the door until his foot came up against Sam’s calf. He tapped his leg in time with Dean’s music—“Drop Dead Legs” was playing, how fucking fortuitous—and Sam tensed but otherwise refused to react.

“… _I get nuh-nuh-nuh-nothin’ but the shakes over you,_

_And nothin’ else could ever do…”_

“If Cas was in trouble,” Dean said suddenly, “he’d’ve told us. Called, or-or-or I dunno, dream-stalked me or something.”

Gabriel hooked the hem of Sam’s pantleg with his foot and tugged up the fabric, wriggling his toes against the other man’s bare skin.

“He wouldn’t just _leave_ us like that,” Dean said. His tone brokered no argument. Gabriel slipped his toes down Sam’s sock.

Sam sighed. “Dean, I don’t— _hey!”_ He whipped his head around and glared at their backseat angel. “What the _fuck?_ When was the last time you cut your damn toenails?”

“Uh, never.” He gestured to himself. “Immortal being. Handcrafted human form. Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Whatever. If you couldn’t tell, now is _not the time.”_ Sam glared at him. “Seriously, don’t you care about your brother at all?”

Gabriel snapped his mouth shut. A sick feeling settled in his gut. Of course he did, of course he cared about Castiel—for as little as he knew him compared to some of their other siblings, he loved the curious little bastard. He just… hadn’t been bothered by the news that he was missing. Hadn’t wondered where he’d gone, or why. Sam’s stupid pretty, well, everything, was distracting—he’d never let that tempt him too far before, but hey, everyone had their breaking point. That was all. He was a callous asshole. So sue him. It didn’t mean anything, and had fuck-all to do with the bruises on his neck.

_Don’t lie to yourself. This is how it starts._

He bowed his head a little, and he must’ve looked pretty damn contrite because Sam’s features softened ever so slightly and he gave him the briefest, tiniest of smiles before turning back around to face the road.

There was a moment of silence as Van Halen faded out, and then Dean barked: “Waitaminute, _toenails?_ Were you two seriously playing footsie just now?”                            

—

That evening they pulled up to a motel called _The Red Rabbit_ , bought a double room and called in a rollaway cot. So far they’d been alternating who got the rollaway, and tonight it was Gabriel’s turn.   

Sam went out to pick up dinner. Dean was taking a shower. As the angel flopped down on the thin, creaky bed, there was a fluttery sound by his ear. He sat up immediately, but before he registered what was going on Castiel had already lifted him up by the lapels and slammed him into the nearest wall.

“Oof! Wow, Cas, between you and the Hardy Boys, I’m not sure who takes the biggest pleasure in banging me up against stuff at this point.” Gabriel waggled his eyebrows. “But it’s nice to know I’m wanted.”

“Did you do it?” Castiel growled.

“’Kay, see, you’re gonna hafta give me a bit more than that, buddy.”

“You killed Lucifer!”

“Yeah. And?”

“Why?”

Gabriel gave Cas a _look_. “Why did I kill _the Devil?_ Gee, I dunno.”

Cas shook him violently, banged his head against the plaster. “Answer me!”

“Ow-how, whoa, okay! Calm down. I…” he sighed, “I did it to save humanity. To end this goddamn war. You happy? Could you put me down now?”

Castiel looked at him a long moment, his blue eyes narrowed, searching his face for something. He appeared to find it, because the next moment Gabriel was back on the ground and the other angel had backed off several feet.

“Michael, he…” Cas paced the room, his brow furrowed. “He’s been telling the angels that you tried to ally yourself with Lucifer, that you killed him because he wouldn’t accept you. That you… you mean to take his place.”

He met Gabriel’s gaze. “It’s not true, is it?”

Gabriel shook his head, trying to stuff down the rage that threatened to rise like bile from his throat. “No,” he said softly.

Castiel nodded. Then he collapsed.

By the time Dean emerged from the bathroom, tugging a t-shirt over a head of still-damp hair, Gabriel had gotten his brother out of his trenchcoat and jacket and onto one of the double beds. He was in the process of pulling off the angel’s shoes when Dean brushed him aside and put a hand on Castiel’s arm.

“Cas?” he croaked. _“Cas!”_

He turned to Gabriel, eyes wild. “What the hell happened? Where’d he come from? What—?”

 Gabriel threw up his hands. “Hey, I don’t know! He just… showed up. And then passed out.”

Dean passed the back of his hand under Cas’ nose. Presumably he felt a breath, for he gave a relieved exhale and stumbled back to sit on the other mattress. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Shit,” he muttered. “I knew he was in a bad way after everything that happened with Zachariah, but…”

“He’ll be fine.” Gabriel shrugged. That wasn’t entirely true. Cas would live, sure, but his Grace was fading. In no time at all, he’d be a hair short of a bonafide human. 

_Oh, boys, you are in for a treat. A Heavenly Invasion on the way and the only angels willing to help you are depowered or slowly turning evil. Should be fun times._

He wondered whether he neglected to tell Dean this out of a desire to spare his feelings, or because he needed the Winchesters to believe that they could make it out of this alive. So they’d accept his help, let him stay just a little bit longer.

All it took was one look at Sam, his green eyes soft with pain and concern when he came in and saw the angel on his bed, for Gabriel to realize it was the latter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When in doubt, just add a bizarre dream sequence. That's my motto, at least. 
> 
> And I apologize for the info dump, it is an unfortunate habit of mine. But hey, worlds need building, myths need creating… I am only one woman.


	3. when the metal is hot and the engine is hungry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I like to hurt Gabe, apparently.

Castiel wanted to leave them for their own protection the moment he woke up.

“I’m useless to you like this,” he said. “I’ll only slow you down.”

Sam and Dean were having none of it, of course, insisting that if they could handle one depowered angel, they could sure as hell handle two. Gabriel disagreed. Cas _would_ slow them down. His gut instinct was to let him leave, stick him on a bus heading to the middle of buttfuck America and wave goodbye—it didn’t matter that, as a new human and a fallen angel, he would probably be safer with protection. But Gabriel fought to suppress that instinct, suppress the apathy with which it came, and embrace his little brother into their doomed fold.

Cas turned out to be a rather nonresponsive travelling buddy. He was quiet, but politely so, preferring to sit and listen and stare out the window than to actually participate in any of the standard road trip activities. Which was great for the first few hours, because he let his brother talk at him the whole time and appeared to be genuinely invested from start to finish—but eventually Gabriel itched for someone to bounce back at him.

So after they broke for lunch, he made sure to give Castiel just a little _push_ through the passenger’s door.

“This is Sam’s seat,” Cas said, frowning. “I shouldn’t—”

“It’s _fine,_ it’s fine. Figured you could use a change of scenery.” Gabriel slammed the door before Castiel could answer. He bent down in front of the window and gave his brother an exaggerated thumbs up through the glass.

“I can see the same things through this window as I could from the back,” Castiel said when Gabriel regained his own seat. “It’s not a change of scenery at all.”

“I mean your conversation partner, jackass.”

“… I was not aware that our conversation was so unstimulating.”

“Maybe if you actually _contributed_ to it you’d get a clue. Just… enjoy your human and I’ll enjoy mine, ‘kay?’

Castiel huffed but otherwise didn’t respond.

Gabriel was greatly amused to see that Sam actually _pouted_ at the sight of the angel riding shotgun. He made a frustrated, pinched face and slid into the backseat with all the grace of an angry kindergartener. Dean, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care—simply accepted the shift and kept driving.

“I hate sitting back here,” Sam mumbled, and Gabriel could see why. There was very little legroom in the back of the Impala, and the younger Winchester wound up with one knee folded up nearly to his chest, his other leg angled so that it brushed against Gabriel’s. The archangel warmed at the contact, minimal though it was. He took in Sam out of the corner of his eye, all gangly and bunched and miserable, and his heart gave a thudding skip.

“Well,” Gabriel said, clapping his hands together, “it looks like _my_ ride’s about to get more comfortable.”

He unbuckled his seatbelt and cracked his knuckles before reaching over and clicking Sam’s open as well. The hunter frowned.

“What are you—?”

“Hush your face, Sammy. Just trust me.”

To his surprise, Sam did. He went still and watched Gabriel curiously, almost shyly, as the archangel reached for his legs and pulled them up onto the seat.

“What the hell are you guys doing back there?” Dean asked.

“I believe,” Castiel said, a note of amusement in his voice, “that Gabriel is attempting to maximize Sam’s physical comfort.”

Dean gave a quick glance over his shoulder and scowled. “What the fuck? Seriously, Gabriel, you wanna go two minutes without harassing my little brother?”

“I could,” Gabriel said absently, not looking up. “But then I’d still be bored, now, wouldn’t I?” 

“Sam, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam’s laugh quivered in his throat. “I’m perfectly capable of roughing him up if he gets too handsy.”

He raised his eyebrows at Gabriel, as if to say: _you got that?_ Gabriel waggled his own brows back at him. _As if you could resist, Samsquatch._

He adjusted Sam until he was lying almost flat on his back, his legs draped over Gabriel’s. The angel himself was leaning half on his side, sandwiched between the hunter and the upholstery, one arm tucked under Sam and the other crooked atop his chest.

“Beeetter?” Gabriel crooned.

Sam coughed and nodded. “Yeah.”

The angel smirked. His gaze trailed from the sunblown green of Sam’s eyes down his mole-peppered cheeks, his long neck, the patch of smooth exposed collarbone just begging to be nipped…

He cleared his throat and willed his body to _cool the fuck down_.

“So, um,” Sam said after a long moment, “you said yesterday that your human form was, uh, _handcrafted._ Is that right?”

“Aw, you’ve been thinking about my body, huh? Hard not to, I know, but try to have some self-control, Sammich.”

“Fuck off,” Sam said, though he said it with a smile. “Seriously. I’m asking.”

“Well, yeah. This body isn’t a vessel—I designed it when I went into hiding. I was pretending to be a Trickster, right, and Tricksters change shape, but they typically have some kind of favourite form. Same thing for when I was posing as Loki. Had to make it look good.”

“Mmm.” Sam’s murmur of assent vibrated deep in his chest, and Gabriel thrilled at the rumble. “So what happened to the _real_ Loki, then?”

“Yeah,” Dean barked, and the archangel wanted to smack him for butting his fucking jarhead in where it wasn’t needed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, too.”

Gabriel shrugged. “He got wind that the other gods wanted to lock him up a couple millennia ago. He was on the lam for ages, but then I popped in and offered to stick him and his wife in a time pocket if he let me use his good name. Of course, by that time everyone’d forgotten about what he did to deserve jailtime and I was home free.”

He yawned and stretched deliciously, letting out a low moan as he felt that _glorious_ strain. Belatedly, he realized that in doing so he was rubbing his body along Sam’s side, their shirts riding up their bellies. Sam swallowed audibly, and Gabriel noted the flush staining his cheeks with a jolt of pride.

“Oh,” Sam croaked. “Interesting.”

“The friction or the story?”

“Shut up.”

—

_Why the fuck did I let him do that?_

The question screamed, unanswered, from the back of Sam’s mind as he kicked at gravel in a greasy spoon parking lot. He’d finished his dinner first and had decided to take a walk afterwards, claiming a need for fresh air. Which was one hundred percent true, because Gabriel had resumed their aborted footsie session under the table mid-meal and Sam could _not_ think straight with that crap going on. Pun intended.

The ex-archangel had always been a flirt. That wasn’t a problem. It was fun, when it wasn’t infuriatingly ill timed, and in his more forgiving moments Sam could admit that he found it rather flattering. But it had never progressed beyond the occasional suggestive comment or a waggle of those damn expressive eyebrows. It had never been _real._ Sam had never _wanted_ it to be real—at least, not once he’d learned that Gabriel wasn’t human.

What he was doing now, though… this was crossing a line.                            

Sam had always been attracted to men as well as women. But he’d very rarely acted on that attraction. It was never the right time, his brother hovered like a mother hen _,_ and the guys were either uninterested or uninteresting when seen up close. Hell, half of the time they were more interested in Dean than they were in him. Aside from a few sloppy one-night stands at Stanford, Sam had virtually no experience with men.

And he really, _really_ didn’t want an asshole of a fallen archangel to be the one to rectify that. Gabriel liked to play at being human, and now he technically _was,_ but he was just as alien as Castiel. He still had that angelic air about him, that feeling of phenomenal power condensed in a lithe little body—chaos, cruelty, and lightning in a shot glass. There was a good person in there, Sam knew, but that golden heart was buried beneath a homicidal Trickster and a wayward angel, beneath petty murders on a college campus, painful mindscrews, and months of harrowing Tuesdays.

It was easy, far too easy, to get sucked in by Gabriel’s infectious laugh and smiling eyes. All it took was one quirked eyebrow and Sam was twenty-three again, trading easy words with the cute janitor in Crawford Hall. A small part of him— _very small,_ he told himself—wanted to be that boy again, wanted that janitor to be harmless and uncomplicated and one hundred percent human. But he could hide from that part of himself.

What he couldn’t hide from was the part that wanted Gabriel regardless.

Sam rode shotgun the rest of the evening.

—

Sleeping arrangements looked to be slightly more unwieldy with Cas there. The first night, Gabriel fell asleep before Dean, who was still sitting by Castiel’s bed when the archangel nodded off. As was now normal, he’d been the last to wake in the morning (Sam was now officially his alarm clock, it seemed. Gabriel could get used to that) so he hadn’t seen how Dean had handled bedtime. Maybe he’d crawled in with Castiel, who knew.

That night, however, nobody appeared to be inclined to sleep together.

“I’m not sharing a bed with this idiot.” Dean jabbed a thumb at Sam. “He snores.”

“I do _not.”_

“Yeah, you do, Sam. And you’ll knock me off the bed with your fucking octopus limbs again, you know you will.”

“That was _one_ time!”

“Whatever, dude.”

The four of them shifted awkwardly on their feet, staring at the two double beds that occupied most of the floor space in their room at _Highway Heaven._ Their first option had been, of course, to rent a second room, but the place was full-up. And out of rollaway cots. If Gabriel hadn’t known better he’d have guessed that the universe was finally conspiring in his favour, because oh, this was opportunity banging _hard_ on the door.

He raised his hand. “I’ll bunk with Sam.”

Sam whipped his head around, meeting Gabriel’s eye with a creased brow. He didn’t answer, just searched the angel’s face with an expression of commingling horror and confusion. Gabriel raised an eyebrow at him then turned away, hiding a smile.

“You,” he pointed at Castiel, “can have Dean.”

Cas squinted and cocked his head. Dean gaped like a fish at Gabriel’s choice of words. He cleared his throat, bunched his shoulders. His tone, when he spoke, was that of a man fighting to temper terror.

“Sure. Whatever. That sounds okay.”

Gabriel felt a jolt of glee at the fact that in two short sentences, he’d managed to both get what he wanted and make everyone uncomfortable in the process. This time he didn’t bother concealing his grin.

As the four of them readied themselves for bed, that was when Gabriel heard the scream.

Cas, though he still clung to some scraps of Grace, was too far-fallen to hear it. It was high and ugly, clawing its way from a scraped-raw throat and ringing sharp in Gabriel’s head. The angel dropped to his knees in the trench between the beds and clutched at his skull.

The scream rose in pitch and now it was many screams at once, wails torn from craws of Hell-tortured souls, so close and so loud like pure pain dragging through him. He knew what it was. He knew what it meant. And oh for the love of his Father it hurt, it hurt so bad to know.

“No. No. Nononono…”

He didn’t realize he was speaking aloud until he felt hands on his shoulders and heard a voice in his ear, a real voice, a present voice. He clung to it like it was driftwood and he was drowning.

“Gabriel, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He looked up and saw a face flecked with moles and stubble, lips molding around words that Gabriel knew but could only barely hear. Gabriel met his eyes— _there’s Sam beautiful Sam my Sam—_ and opened his mouth to answer him but all that he could force out was a whimpering, “Please, no more”.

“No more what? Come on, Gabriel, talk to me.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

That was Castiel, Gabriel knew without looking. He wouldn’t look, he couldn’t look, he was anchored by Sam’s gaze and it was the only thing keeping him from splitting open like ripe fruit. He was being torn to pieces, ragged and sharp.

Then the screaming stopped. Cut off so quick Gabriel almost didn’t notice. His head lolled as the ringing began to fade, and then Sam’s hands were on the sides of his face, holding him up. Gabriel’s eyes went unfocused and Sam was a blur, and there was a Deanish blur standing somewhere behind him, and the Deanish blur was talking but his words were too far away for the angel to hear. His mouth tasted like metal. The only thing he knew was strong hands and cutting pain in his head.

“Hey, hey, look at me,” Sam said, gently angling Gabriel’s face so that he had no choice but to comply. “What’s going on?”

His voice was soft, so welcome after the screams. His eyes were leaves in autumn, half-stained gold. Something twitched in Gabriel’s mind and he wanted to gouge them out with his thumbs, stamp their kind colour into red and dust.

_No. No, please stop._

Gabriel shuddered and he lowered his own hands to grip Sam’s.

“The angels,” he said. “They’re here.”

“What?” Dean yelped. “Already?”

 Gabriel nodded. “They… Fuck, that’s the sound they make when they descend en masse. This is _not_ good.”

“Sound?” Sam’s brow creased. “That’s what that was about?”

Castiel’s voice was low as he spoke. “The sound of an angel descending from Heaven is… unpleasant. Typically we don’t notice it; it’s buried in Angel Radio. It takes an extremely discerning ear to pick it out—and archangels definitely have extremely discerning ears. And if enough descend at once…”

“It’s like getting microphone feedback from Hell,” Gabriel finished, trembling. 

“How did you hear it?” Dean asked. “I thought you said Michael took your Grace.”

“Wait.” Sam’s frown deepened. “Yeah.”

Gabriel froze. Ah. Right.

He shrugged, hoped he looked suitably baffled. “I don’t know. I guess it… I guess some things linger.”

“Bullshit.” Oh, he could _kill_ Dean right now. “Cas can’t hear Angel Radio anymore, and nobody took _his_ Grace.”

“I was an _arch_ angel, asshole,” Gabriel snapped. “And I’m the first archangel to lose their Grace. I don’t know how this shit works any better than you do.”

Yes. Righteous anger worked wonders for a good lie. Dean huffed and Gabriel knew he wasn’t convinced, but he backed down. So did his brother.

“Do you have any idea where they are?” Sam asked, quietly. He probably didn’t notice the way his thumbs moved across Gabriel’s skin as he spoke.

Gabriel shook his head. “Can’t tell, no.”

But they were there. They were on Earth and they were getting ready to attack and Gabriel couldn’t stop them. It was already over.

—

Sam let Gabriel share his bed without complaint. And the bastard really did snore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, look, more unnecessary cuddling! And by unnecessary I of course mean entirely necessary.


	4. a killer's on the bloodshot streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody can sleep, a Kali ex Machina appears, and shit. Goes. Down.

They tracked the first garrison of angels to a small island off the Washington coast, near the Canadian border. The Winchesters itched to storm the castle right then and there, but Cas and Gabriel convinced them that it was a bad idea, that they needed to stay on the mainland and plan before they stranded themselves on a rock with invading angels. They parked the Impala on a dirt road running through scrub on its way to the beach, in a bend obscured by tall grass and thistle, and proceeded to camp out there for the night.

On the morning after he heard the scream of Michael’s descent, Gabriel had awoken to find Sam half-draped over him in a sleepy sprawl. (Dean’s octopus comment appeared to have been well founded.) Unluckily, Gabriel slept the same way, and they had tangled themselves quite thoroughly in the night without even the benefit of being post-coital. Waking to the weight of Sam against him, his nose buried in the curls at the back of the angel’s neck, Gabriel was flushed with several impulses at once. His ever-swelling dark half urged him to pin the human down, to bite and suck and fuck him til he couldn’t breathe, rip Sam’s throat out with his teeth as he came.

He swallowed that down, and it did not go gently.

The part of him that he still allowed to call itself Gabriel wanted to pull Sam tighter, because he was warm and kind and good and the archangel kind of wanted to kiss him but could settle for just being held.

That urge was paralyzed by the rest of him, by the overwhelming knowledge that _this was not allowed._ Because for whatever Azazel did to him, for whatever Lucifer had meant for him, Sam really _was_ warm, and kind, and good. And Gabriel was not.

So he remained still until Sam’s breath on his neck hitched and shallowed, and the younger Winchester untangled himself from the angel in his bed.

Now, as the four of them struggled to make themselves comfortable in the Impala, Gabriel thought back to that moment, to the control he’d exerted over himself. That meant he wasn’t beat. Michael’s poison hadn’t overwhelmed him. He could still help; he could still do what Dean had said he should do and _stand up._

Right? Right.

He settled in beside Castiel. Everything was fine.

An hour later found Gabriel pacing in the thistle and scrub, staring out at the thin ribbon of ocean that could be made out over the grass and swells of rock before him. The others were asleep, or at least pretending to be, and Gabriel’s blood was singing. He wanted to hit something, _hurt_ something, rip the flesh off angels’ vessels and watch their Grace spill like quicksilver. He was itching to cross over to the island and start taking heads—he wasn’t stupid enough to go through with it, but the urge and the effort of controlling it was starting to make him antsy.

“You’re nervous,” Castiel murmured, too close for comfort. Gabriel jumped.

“Christ, Cas, you wanna be a little less creepy, maybe?”

Castiel just stared at him. “Are you worried about facing the angels without your Grace? Because I,” he gestured to himself, looking deceptively small and rumpled in his humanity, “can… _relate.”_

Gabriel clenched and unclenched his hands, shifting from foot to foot like he was keen to run. Which he was.

“I’m fine, Cas,” he said. “Just can’t sleep.”

Castiel cocked his head. “Are you certain?”

“It’s not exactly _comfy_ in that damn backseat, now, is it? Besides, I’m still not used to the whole sleeping thing.”

“It’s rather relaxing, I find.” Cas shrugged. “But you’re correct—cars are not as pleasant as beds. And you are a less agreeable sleeping partner than Dean.”

“Right. Uh, what?”

“Your body is not of a shape or size to be a fitting bedfellow for me. Dean is more… comfortable.” His jaw twitched, and even though his expression didn’t change it was clear that even _Castiel_ knew how that had sounded. “Proportionately,” he added.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t comment. He thought about waking tangled in gangly, well-muscled limbs and wondered whether he was a _fitting bedfellow_ for anybody.

There was a long pause as the angels just looked at each other. Then Castiel seemed to get a read on the room—so to speak—and looked down at his scuffed shoes.

“If you _are_ at all anxious,” he said slowly, “know that you are not alone. You’re my brother, Gabriel, and I am here for you.” 

He reached out a tentative hand and gave Gabriel’s shoulder a stiff pat before retreating into the Impala. The archangel looked up and sighed at the few stars winking in the cloud-heavy sky. He loved Castiel. He loved him. He loved him. He knew he did, and he wanted to cling to that affection before it had a chance to fade away.

Gabriel needed to move, so he walked towards the beach. It was high tide; the water reached the rocks at what would be the fringes of the small pebble-beach come morning. He climbed onto a flat-topped boulder, saltworn and mostly unbarnacled, and lay down on his stomach to peer out at the water. The island was a ways off the mainland, just a rocky lump on the horizon from where he was.

He closed his eyes. Listened to the lap of the tide, the soft skittering of pebbles shifting beneath its flow. He hadn’t been to the seaside in a long time. He’d almost forgotten how peaceful it was.

He blamed his proximity to the blackness of sleep for the fact that Sam got the jump on him.

“Hey,” the younger Winchester murmured as he settled warm by Gabriel’s side. The archangel flinched.

“What is it, Sneak up on Gabriel Day?”

“Hmm?”

“Never mind. What brings you to my rock of solitude, Sammoose?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“That makes three out of four. Maybe this should be our cue to stop trying to sleep in the fucking car.”

Sam snorted a laugh. “If you’re gonna be riding with us a while, sorry to say but you’re gonna have to get used to that sort of thing.”

Gabriel’s mouth quirked. He rolled onto his side and looked up at Sam, who was sitting with his legs dangling off the rock. The moonlight silhouetted him in silver. “Who says I’m gonna be riding with you a while?”

“Oh, I, uh…” Sam’s shoulders bunched. “I guess I just assumed…”

Gabriel hauled himself up into a sitting position and patted Sam’s thigh. He smiled up at him.

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” he said. “I’m planning on sticking around as long as you need me.”

_Or as long as I can… before I become something I don’t want to be. Something you’ll want to hunt. And you_ will _want to hunt me, Sam. You’ll hunt me and you’ll hate me and you’ll kill me sure as day._

He shrugged. “And hey, let’s face it, with the way you idiots are, you’ll probably need me for a while.”

It was too dark to tell for certain, but Gabriel thought he saw Sam smile back.

“I’m sure we will,” he said. He shifted his weight onto one arm, an arm that came to rest on the rock behind the archangel’s back.

They sat and watched the waves for a while. Gabriel didn’t move his hand from Sam’s thigh. Sam didn’t ask him to.

—

The next morning Dean drove them into town where they rented a small speedboat for the day. Which meant they had to transfer any and all supplies and weaponry they might need into said speedboat. Which was tedious and annoying and took up far too much of their time. Which left Gabriel and Dean irate and itchy for blood, and Sam and Castiel attempting to placate them through a combination of patient silence and stern looks.

They ran so late that they wound up having to stop for lunch on the boardwalk. Gabriel was somewhat glad of it, because the local fish tacos were legendary, but at the same time stopping to refuel when he technically didn’t need to was incredibly frustrating.

Lunch was a tense affair, and by the end of it the archangel wanted to break the jaws of all three of his companions so they could no longer chew so fucking loudly. But their meal was over soon enough, and then they were off to war.

—

It became clear as soon as they approached the island why the angels had chosen it for their outpost. There was no bay, no sliver of beach, nothing but jagged rocks and sheer stone walls and little earthen cliffs all the way around. In short, there was nowhere to park the damn boat.

They pulled around the island twice and managed nothing but to disturb a small herd of seals sunning on some of the flatter rocks. The second time ‘round, one of the seals came straight up to the boat and bellowed at them reproachfully. Dean flipped it off.

“If either of us still had power, we could have been there already,” Castiel muttered to Gabriel, more out of frustration than anything else. Still, an equally frustrated Dean glared at him.

“Thanks for the input, Cas, but that _isn’t helping,_ ” he snapped.

“I only meant—”

“Yeah, I know what you meant. Doesn’t get us on the goddamn island though, does it?”

Sam frowned and turned to face their would-be destination. He’d actually felt fairly confident when they’d set out, but this roadblock and bickering was raining on his parade. Raining _thoroughly_ on his parade. His papier-mâché floats were nothing but sodden, sticky lumps of glue and disintegrating paper on the ground.

Maybe he shouldn’t have stayed up with Gabriel so late.

The pair of them hadn’t gone back to the Impala until after three. They’d sat flush against each other, occasionally trading soft-spoken words but mostly just staring out at the water. Sam hadn’t gone out there for Gabriel; he’d just wanted some fresh air and a place to clear his head before the attack. But he’d been glad to see the ex-archangel on that rock, glad to be still and quiet with him. After seeing how badly the descent had hurt him, and knowing that he had risked his life to stop the fighting only to have it flare up again, Sam figured Gabriel could use a few hours of being still and quiet with someone.

But Gabriel was telegraphing his tetchiness in waves now, and Sam knew that whatever balm his company had provided had long-since faded. He was too like Dean, Gabriel—they were both creatures of action, easily bored, unhappy with stagnation. Sam could get like that too, when left unchecked, but in the face of his brother and the Trickster he mellowed into something of a leavening force. Calm when they weren’t, angry when they weren’t. Pulling them in and out of their headspaces by unconsciously shifting to counter them. So he swallowed his own considerably milder frustration and became The Patient One.

“There has to be a way,” he said, voice loud and firm. “We just need to _calm down_ and look for it.”

“We’re looking, Sam!” Dean turned his glare on his brother. “What the fuck do you think we’ve been doing?”

“I just mean we have to look harder. There’s gotta be something—”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Oh _come on,_ Sam, of course there isn’t. What, d’you think the angels would bother to park their asses someplace humandicap-accessible? In fact, the longer I look at it, the more I’m willing to bet this island didn’t even exist until they decided they wanted to camp here.”

Sam frowned. _Holy shit._ “Can they _do_ that?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “You of all people know what archangels are capable of, Sam. Run of the mill peons like Cassie here—” he clapped Castiel, whose expression was a combination of _I hate everything_ and _brother why_ , on the shoulder. “—They can’t conjure shit. Michael, on the other hand…”

Dean groaned and ran a hand through his hair. Sam closed his eyes, suddenly very tired.

“So,” he said slowly, “we can’t actually do anything? Why didn’t you _say_ something?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I’m saying something now. And hell, it couldn’t hurt to check the place out before turning tail! But hey, we checked, it’s done, we can’t do anything here. Might as well go back into town, maybe check out that market on the wharf, buy some seashell jewelry… make a day of it. Then we can look for the next outpost.”

Sam opened his eyes, took in Gabriel’s nonchalant, almost _bored_ expression. Just moments ago the ex-archangel had been as irritable as Dean—he had been since lunch. Why was he suddenly so willing to let this go?

Dean, for his part, looked utterly defeated. He slumped a little in his seat, and Castiel’s hand was on his shoulder before he had a chance to blink.

“It’s all right, Dean,” he said softly. “We’d best leave before the angels realize that we’re here.”

The elder Winchester shook his head. “No. No, come on, we can’t just _go.”_

“Dean—”

“I agree with the boy.”

Sam was fairly sure that the speedboat wasn’t capable of holding a fifth passenger. He was also fairly sure that the magic of the Hindu gods could override that particular issue, so he didn’t bother thinking on it too long.

Kali stood in the middle of the boat, looming over the four men and wearing what could only be described as a biker _chic_ interpretation of Rajput armor. Her expression was blank but there was a smug smile curling in her eyes.

“Gabriel,” she said. “I see that you aren’t dead. Congratulations.”

The ex-archangel gaped up at her. “What are you doing here?”

“As much as I _hate_ getting involved in Judeo-Christian politics,” Kali sniffed, “you did risk your life to help me. Most of you did, in fact. And for that, I owe you a boon.”

“A boon,” Dean said. “Just one for all of us?”

Kali leveled a look at him that managed to be both blank and scathing all at once. “It’s not for you to decide _how_ _much_ gratitude I express, Dean Winchester,” she said, and her voice was acid. “Now. If I understand correctly, the four of you want to get to that island and smoke out the angel garrison, yes?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “Yes we do. And we’ll need to make a quick getaway, too, afterwards.”

“So you want me to come collect you as well. Hm.” Kali rolled her shoulders. “I’ve granted more tedious favours. Very well.”

Then they were on the island.

—

Gabriel had always been impressed by the dispassion with which Kali used her powers. Impressed and a little turned on. Unless she was trying to make a point, she didn’t bother with the smoke and mirrors that were the tricks of the trade of many gods. Blunt and brutal efficiency: that was Kali’s way.

He was also greatly amused by the lost-puppy looks on Castiel and the Winchesters’ faces when they found themselves and their gear on the island before they had a chance to blink. But that was neither here nor there.

“Arm yourselves,” Kali said in a low voice. “Quickly. I can shield you from detection for a few minutes, but that’s all. This place reeks of angel magic… it’s entirely their playing field.”

“And the boat?” Castiel asked as he and his companions did as they were told. “We rented the boat. What’ll happen to it?”

“Don’t worry about it, Cas,” Dean said.

Kali raised an eyebrow. “It’ll be taken care of,” she said coolly. “Never let it be said that I don’t deliver on my gifts.”

Gabriel picked up his angel blade—stored in the Impala since his battle with Lucifer—and slipped it up his jacket sleeve. As he made to tromp ahead of the boys, Kali gripped his arm and pulled him to the side.

“I can see what he did to you,” she hissed, digging her fingers into his flesh. “I can smell it on you. What do you think you’re _doing?”_

He glared at her. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m stopping Michael before he curbstomps _your_ sorry ass, that’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re unstable. This will only make it worse.”

“So what? If I’m going to Hell, I might as well—”

“Gabriel!” Kali’s gaze hardened, her grip tightened. “Don’t be selfish. If you turn completely, where does that leave the rest of the world? We’ll be at your mercy. We could barely handle one Devil. But you… you know this world better than Lucifer did. You’re a Trickster God _and_ an archangel. You will burn the world to ash if you are corrupted, and all my kind with it, don’t you understand that?”

He did. But he needed to do this, he needed to fix things, he needed to redeem himself before he ruined everything. He could hide in Hell afterwards; convince Cas and the Winchesters to throw him into the Pit. Kali didn’t understand, and he wasn’t obligated to make her.

“I can’t let them face Michael alone,” was what he said, smirking. “They’ll die in two seconds without me. So long, Team Save the World.”

“Let them die.”

“That’s your solution to _everything.”_

“Gabriel…”

“Kali,” he sighed. “We need them. Fuck if I know why my Dad picked them, but they’ve got it. That… I dunno, Destiny Spark or some shit that goes along with ordained vessels. I thought it’d go away when I killed Lucifer, but it didn’t. We need them alive for this. And I aim to keep them alive as long as I can.”

“And will you know your limits?”

“I will,” he said, though he wasn’t sure whether it was true.

Kali exhaled slowly. She gave his arm another squeeze.

“I wasn’t lying,” she said, “when I told you I don’t love you anymore.”

He gave a sad smile. “Yeah. I figured.”

She kissed him on the mouth, gentle and chaste. “That doesn’t mean I want you dead. Or damned."

Gabriel drew a shuddering breath and let his smile widen. “I’ll do my best to avoid that, then.”

“Mm. See that you do.” Kali released him, and Gabriel, Castiel, Sam, and Dean made their way through the scrub of the island. The archangel didn’t look back.

—

Gabriel didn’t miss the sound of the approaching angels. He simply neglected to tell the others.

There was a flutter and a rustle of air, and all four of them were shoved up against trees, held in place by invisible bindings. The Winchesters struggled—veins popping in their necks, their jaws straining—but Gabriel and Castiel stayed still. They knew this song and dance. They’d once played this game themselves.

Six angels came to meet them, wearing what looked to be local yokels. One, ostensibly the leader of their party, approached Sam and Dean with the easy smile of an angel used to working the flesh of a vessel. The vessel in question was a young Filipino woman in a cardigan and capris, her hair in a dark braid running down to the small of her back.

“Sam and Dean Winchester,” she said cheerily. “How unexpected! I suppose it would be… erroneous to assume that you’ve come to offer your services to Michael’s cause?”

“Damn right,” Dean growled.

The angel tsked. “Language, Dean.”

“Don’t bother, Bethael,” Gabriel called. “Boy’s got a mouth like a sailor, bless him.”

Bethael turned, cocked her head at the sound. Her smile widened and she was next to Gabriel an instant later.

“Gabriel,” she breathed. “Is it truly you?”

“In the flesh, little sister.”

“And such modest flesh, at that.” Her eyes hardened, but her smile never wavered. “We know what you’ve done, Gabriel. Michael told us. And now you’ve… what? Come to stop us from doing God’s work?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Don’t believe everything Michael tells you, Bethael. I’m here to stop you from doing _his_ work, not Dad’s. Dad wouldn’t want this.”

“Our Father,” Bethael said, pulling herself to her vessel’s full height, “wouldn’t want us to make a paradise for we who deserve it? Is that what you’re saying, brother?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not Michael’s place to decide who deserves _anything_. And it’s not Michael’s place to—”

“How _dare_ you?” Bethael screeched. “How dare you, after what you have done? You were going to help _Lucifer—”_

“No, I wasn’t!”

“Lies!”

“Sister, _please.”_ That was Castiel. “Gabriel was framed.”

“Right!” Sam added. “He didn’t kill Lucifer to take his place, he killed him to protect us. Michael’s the one who’s lying to you.”

Bethael laughed, and the sound rippled as her lackeys laughed with her.

“You expect me,” she said, “to believe you over Michael? To believe a rebel,” she gestured at Cas, “a defiant vessel,” next at Dean, “an abomination,” then at Sam, “and Lucifer’s successor?” Finally she gestured at Gabriel, and Gabriel wanted to rip her to pieces.

“We said he didn’t do it,” Sam cried. “He’s innocent!”

“Well, about this.”

_“Dean.”_

“Even if that were true,” Bethael said, “it doesn’t change the fact that his Grace has been corrupted. Oh, but you can’t see it, can you?”

She drew her blade, quick as a whip, and placed its tip against Gabriel’s cheek. “You can’t see,” she went on, “how the poison courses through him, wicked and black.”

She flicked her wrist and pain bloomed as she nicked his skin. He saw the light of his Grace gleaming out of the corner of his eye.

Castiel and the Winchesters had stopped struggling, were now gaping at him, at Bethael as she drew her blade away. Spilled Grace clung to it, ice-blue light cracked with purple and black. Its glow was hazy, muddied—like smoke rather than radiance. But it was unmistakably Grace.

And the Winchesters were unmistakably pissed.

They said nothing, but Gabriel saw their faces and he knew it was over. Dean looked livid, but Sam looked almost _hurt._ Gabriel glared at Bethael, who could only give a smug smile in return.

“No longer an archangel, not yet a demon,” she drawled, bending to wipe the poisoned Grace into the dirt. “But you are damned, Gabriel. That much is certain.”

Gabriel laughed, quiet and bitter. “Oh, Bethy,” he murmured. “Bethy, Bethy, Bethy…”

She straightened up and cocked an eyebrow at him. Gabriel’s hand shot out and caught her by the throat. In one swift movement he’d spun her around, slammed her back against his tree. Her blade fell to the ground with a dull thud.

“You’re right, Bethael,” he said, “I’m not an archangel, and I’m not a demon. I’m both. And you, my _stupid_ little sister, are neither.” 

He slipped his blade out of his sleeve and stabbed her in the heart.

—

Sam’s bonds dissipated and he fell to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean and Cas do the same. The angels were congregating on Gabriel, and he was— _holy shit_ —he was hacking at them as if his blade were a battleaxe.

Light and Grace and silver flashed, and Sam and Castiel made to move towards the fray. Dean stopped them with hands on their arms.

“Let him,” he growled. “Let the lying bastard take care of his own mess. C’mon.”

“We can’t just leave him, Dean,” Sam said. “If he’s still powered up he can help us.”

“Fuck, Sammy, he—” Dean shook his head. “Dammit, we don’t have time for this! Cas, you’re coming with me. We’re gonna find the rest of the camp.”

After they left, Sam lingered on the fringe of the battle, trying to look for an opening. Gabriel moved like a dancer, fluid and brutal and swift. The other angels—and there had only been six before, but now they surrounded him in droves _fucking hell_ —fell before him like waves crashing on a rock.

One burly angel raised a blade behind Gabriel’s back and Sam dove in. He rammed a sigil-crested hunting knife into the seraph’s neck and yanked it out in a spray of vessel’s blood and Grace.

Gabriel turned his head and tossed him a savage grin before carving into his next attacker.

Sam ducked under the swings of three angels swarming him at once. A fourth slammed into him, knocked him to the ground and pinned him there with a blade through his shoulder.

He cried out, saw a whirl of gold as Gabriel turned at the sound. Sam kicked the angel off with a boot to the gut, and she snarled and fell upon him again. This time he was ready; he caught her eye on the edge of his knife. She wailed and staggered back into Gabriel—who drove his blade into her spine before she could draw breath to scream again.

“Who loves ya, Sammy?” Gabriel crowed, ducking down to heal his companion with a light touch. He stood and swung around to backhand his next attacker in the jaw. He stabbed the reeling angel in the back of the neck and kicked him off the blade. “Come on, bucko,” he said over his shoulder, “I can’t guard your ass forever, get up!”

Sam did. He did and he laid low two more angels without losing sight of Gabriel, of the halo of bloodmist and Gracious afterimages that surrounded him.

_Poison,_ Sam thought, as an errant flash of silver nicked Gabriel and spilled a thin beam of blackened light. _He’s poisoned, he’s gone dark, he’s not himself, he’s… wrong._

At last the stream of angels ended and there was but one straggler weeping wounded on his knees.

“P-please,” he sobbed, clutching his belly where his Grace and his vessel’s internal organs threatened to fall out. “P-please, Gabriel, just let m-me leave this body—for our Father’s sake, just _let me leave the vessel!”_

Gabriel, face spattered with red and light, crouched next to him. Sam heaved the corpse of his last kill off himself and began to limp towards them.

“So,” Gabriel said, his expression calm but his eyes wild, “you’d let your vessel deal with all… this? Just like that? Just so long as you get to live?”

“Y-yes, _please Gabriel,_ please, I promise you I won’t harm you! I don’t want—”

“To die? Well, Forcas, I doubt Joe Schmoe here wants that either.”

“Y-you can h-heal him!”

“Hm. Possibly. I dunno, with the way his guts are leaking out, I think I might be too late. So once again it comes down to him or you. Tch, Forcas, don’t you know a good captain always goes down with his ship?”

_“Gabriel, ple-he-hease…_ I’m your _brother._ Wh-what do you care for this cockroach?”

Gabriel hissed in a breath. “Ooh, that was the wrong _fucking thing_ to say.”

He swung his blade and— _oh, fuck._

He took Forcas’ head clean off.

Sam was too stunned to move. He’d seen worse, of course he’d seen worse, but not from Gabriel, not so cold or so vicious. The archangel—or could Sam even call him that?—stood up. He grinned at Sam, blinked and was beside him. He grabbed the collar of the hunter’s jacket and before Sam could so much as begin to protest, Gabriel’s mouth was crushing his in a kiss that tasted of blood.

There was a moment, brief and terrifying, in which Sam considered kissing back. But no—he shoved the angel away and took a big step back.

“What the _fuck_ is your problem?” he hissed.

Gabriel laughed. “Oh, come _on,_ Sam! Post-battle sex is the best sex. Not that you’d know that, considering you spend all your time with your brother… or, heh, maybe I’m wrong?”

“Shut up,” Sam growled. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Aw, touch a nerve? I promise not to judge. And I sure as hell promise I give better head than Dean ‘Blubber Lips’ Winchester.” 

Sam grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the ground. _“Shut. Up. Gabriel.”_

To his surprise, Gabriel did.

“You lied to me,” Sam went on, voice low as he loomed over the angel. “You’ve been lying to us since you killed Lucifer. Ever planning on mentioning that you were gonna go Dark Side on us? Or were you saving that? And now what, you’re turning into a goddamn demon? Hell, screw turning into, you’re pretty much one already. Look what you just fucking did!”

Gabriel’s brow furrowed. He looked… confused.

“And if you ever, _ever_ kiss me again,” Sam spat, “I will kill you. _Do you understand?”_

Gabriel nodded stiffly. Sam let him go and stood up, and the angel promptly rolled onto his side and vomited into the dirt.

Wiping bile from his chin, Gabriel wobbled to his feet and looked at the carnage around him. His eyes widened in horror. He took a deep breath, whispered _shit_ on the exhale.

“I did this…” he muttered. “I… I… oh, fuck, I did this!”

Sam wasn’t quick enough to catch him before he crumpled to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HATE WRITING FIGHT SEQUENCES. They are fun when finished but a bitch to start. But a-HA, here comes evil!Gabe, who is… shockingly fun to write. I suggest you try it. It's awesome, really.


	5. pure and good and right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, right, there's a demon cure! Let's give it a go, shall we?

When Gabriel woke, it was to find himself chained to a chair in a metal room that hummed with the power of a thousand different sigils and spells. It was decked out like some strange cross between a college dorm and a prison cell. The floor beneath him was ninety-nine percent Devil’s Trap, and the walls were painted with Enochian wards written in smoldering holy oil. The energy crackled against his flesh, thrummed in his muddied Grace. None of it hurt—yet—but it was incredibly uncomfortable. Like an itch just beneath the skin.

Gabriel snapped his fingers, intending to at least break free of the chains, but he didn’t budge and neither did they.

“Hey!” he called, his throat dry. “Guys? Guys, come on, you can’t just leave me here!"

No response.

“Dean? Castiel! _Sam!”_

“Fucking hell,” he muttered. He raised his voice. “Seriously? This is how you wanna play this? All right, your call, boys!”

Gabriel then proceeded to break out in a loud, deliberately off-key rendition of the entire soundtrack of _Hair._

—

Sam and Dean hauled paper bags full of groceries—snacks, pie, beer, and sandwich fixings, mostly, though Sam had managed to sneak a bag of apples in there—through Bobby’s door. They were greeted by the muffled caterwauling of ‘60’s hits wafting up from the basement and the sight of Bobby and Castiel sipping cider at the kitchen table.  

“He won’t stop,” Bobby said miserably. “We tried, but he _won’t stop.”_

_“Hooooooow can people beee so heartleeeess? Hooooooow can people be so cruel?”_

Cas closed his eyes.  “I believe he’s attempting to be ironic. But I can’t be sure.”

_“Easy to be haaaaard, easy to be cooooooooold…”_

Sam dropped his packages onto the table with a thud. “I’ll deal with him,” he said, turning on his heel before anyone could so much as react.

_“Hooooooow can people have no feeeeeliiiings?”_

He took the stairs down to the basement two at a time.

 _“Hooooooow can they ignore their friends—_ C’mon, guys, you know the words!— _Ee-ee-eaaaasyyyy to be haaaaard—”_

Sam wrenched the panic room open, the door giving a rusty squeal of protest as he barged through.

Gabriel’s eyes lit up at the sight of him, and this time it took little effort for the hunter to quell the familiar reactionary jolt in his stomach.

“Sambo!” Gabriel grinned. “Whaddya think: Archangel on Broadway, yay or nay? Ooh, you missed this one earlier, this one’s my favourite.”

He cleared his throat, then, in a low and velvety tone:

_“Sodomyyyy, fellatioooo, cunnilinguuuuus, pederastyyyyy...”_

“Be quiet,” Sam said, overlapping, “before I gag you.”

“I’m flattered, kiddo, but my rule is dinner first.”

Sam took a long step forward and clamped a hand over Gabriel’s mouth. The chair skidded back an inch as the hunter crowded his captive’s space, rattling the chains.

“Be,” he snarled, “quiet. Can you do that for me?”

The archangel burned beneath him, hot breath and warm flesh and eyes like amber and gold. Eyes that held Sam’s fast and danced somewhere between manic satisfaction and hurt. That dared him to squeeze harder, cut deeper, spit all his wrath in Gabriel’s face and make him pay for what he’d done.

“Can you do that for me,” Sam repeated softly.

Gabriel nodded, and oh, he was so warm.

Sam drew his hand away but didn’t move, propping himself up by gripping the sides of the chair. And if that meant that his face was dangerously close to the archangel’s, well, more’s the fucking pity. Intimidation was a good bet. Intimidation was key.

“Castiel and Bobby say they’ve found a ritual to cure demons,” he said. “It involves needles, sanctified blood, and a _lot_ of pain, but it’s the best shot we’ve got to flush this poison out of you. The only question is… do we _want_ to do that?”

Gabriel’s jaw twitched but his gaze never wavered. Sam sighed.

“You put us all at risk,” he murmured. “We could’ve _helped_ you, and you lied to us. Why should we do anything for you, huh? Give me one good reason.”

For a long moment the only sound was the crackle of the holy oil sigils burning on the walls. Then Gabriel let out a bitter laugh.

“I can’t.”

_Ah._

Sam straightened up, nodded at the archangel below him. And he _could_ still be called an angel, after all. “Okay, then. Blood ritual it is.”

—

Two days later, Sam hauled a cooler down to the panic room, along with a syringe and a little yellowed leather book that smelled of old magic.

“So, what?” Gabriel sighed, watching Sam’s back as he fiddled with his trinkets at the edge of the panic room. “You’re just gonna stick me?”

Sam cast an annoyed look over his shoulder. “Just once, I’d like to hear you make a comment that isn’t fifty percent innuendo.”

“How ‘bout one hundred percent in _your_ endo?”

The look intensified. Sam turned back to whatever it was he was doing. Gabriel chuckled, began whistling “Sodomy” because now it was stuck in his head, dammit.

“Where’s the rest of the Goof Troop, then?” he asked, once the song had run its course. “Waiting upstairs for my glorious reentrance into society? I warn you, Sam, I didn’t make a good debutante. Kept stomping on my partner’s toes.”

“We think we’ve figured out where the next-closest outpost is,” Sam said. “They’ve gone to check it out. Take it down, if they can.”

“Mm, and you’ve benched yourself all for me? I’m touched.”

“Gabriel,” Sam turned to face him, and he had a syringe full of blood in his hand, “you can stop.”

The archangel opened his mouth, promptly closed it again. Sam didn’t look irritated. He didn’t _sound_ irritated, for that matter. There was a softness in his eyes, something sad and anxious and terribly, terribly young. Gabriel swallowed hard, because a man Sam’s size should not have the ability to look that vulnerable.

Gabriel bit back the urge to tear that vulnerability away, break it apart with tooth and claw. How fucking _dare_ Sam look at him like that, like he felt sorry for him? Like he gave two shits what happened to him? Gabriel knew that Sam thought he was frightened, weak, that he was posturing. And Sam believed he could fix him, oh, how fucking precious. Fix him with what? Some pure blood and some old words and the incredible power of guilt. That’s all this was, after all: a guilt trip. This was Sam soothing his guilty conscience for everything that had happened to the archangel after he saved them from Lucifer. He didn’t care about Gabriel. Not really. Gabriel wasn’t worth caring about.

Sam stepped inside the Devil’s Trap, too tentatively, too shyly for a man about to inject a half-demon with blessed blood. “I stayed,” he said, “I _offered_ to stay because I want to help you beat this.”

The hunter slipped the needle in—well, perhaps _slipped_ was not the word. The hunter _stabbed_ the needle into Gabriel’s forearm, without preamble or pity. He pressed his thumb down on the gun and _dear Father who art in Heaven,_ that itched.

Or at least it began as an itch. It ran warm and prickly through him at first, that dull fire slowly sparking hotter as it crept towards his heart. For a moment it was unbearable. Gabriel felt as if his skin were being pulled too tight, too thin, as if he would burst at the seams. He gasped aloud and writhed against his chains. The pressure was building behind his eyes, every strand of hair on his body throbbing sharp and hot at the follicle.

He was full, and full of fire.

Then it faded. Gabriel relaxed, collapsed back into the chair.

“Whew!” He flashed Sam an empty grin. “That’ll wake you up!”

Sam’s jaw jumped. “One down,” he said.

“One?” Gabriel watched Sam park himself on the dusty cot by the door. “How long is this gonna take?”

“I don’t know,” Sam gave a grim smile. “Typically the ritual calls for a shot of blood every hour, eight hours total. But that’s to cure a demon. You’re not… you’re not a full demon yet. _And_ you’re an archangel to boot. It could take less than eight hours. Could take longer. But it will work. Cas says it’s the only way he knows.”

Gabriel suffered a spike of affection for Sam’s confidence. _It’ll work because the angel said so._

“And if it doesn’t?” He shifted in his seat and the chains rattled around him. “What then?”

Sam met his eye. “It will,” he said firmly, almost fiercely. There was a current of _or I’ll force it to_ in his tone.

Gabriel wanted to look away. Wanted to, but couldn’t. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he muttered.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m not your responsibility.”

“I _know,_ Gabriel.” Sam’s eyes flickered, and the smile there almost looked genuine. “That’s not why I’m here. You’re…” he shook his head, seemed to think better of whatever it was he was going to say.  “I told you. I’m doing this because I want to help.”

He was giving him that vulnerable, earnest look again, and Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to say that he didn’t believe him. He could let himself live a pretty lie for a few hours.

—

If the first injection burned, the second was a long and ugly blaze. The third was worse, and the fourth was torture. It was as if that first shot of blood had scraped him raw, sloughed off some protective layer inside of him, and everything that came after was just raking over already-sensitive flesh.

At the fifth hour, the blood sent stabbing pains through Gabriel’s body, sharp and glassy. It left him aching and wrecked and trembling, and he couldn’t swallow around the metallic lump in his throat, couldn’t see around the grey blurs at the edge of his vision, couldn’t think around the protesting shrieks of every raw nerve in his body.

Gabriel would have vomited, if he weren’t sure he’d be vomiting blood.

But Sam was there. Sam’s hands were on him, big and calloused and strong. Sam was holding his head up, telling him to _stay awake, please Gabriel, stay awake for me._

Gabriel leaned into the touch, mumbled something that sounded vaguely like Sam’s name. The taller man’s face swam in his vision—he blinked and Sam was gone. He blinked again and his vision was awash with shapes and colour, none of which made very much sense. His eyes burned dry.

He thought he heard his name. He _knew_ he felt another stab of the needle into his vein, and as the pain wracked him again this time he screamed, he snarled, he pulled against his chains and gnashed his teeth at his attacker. A shape out of the corner of his eye pulled away, shadows and light shifting about him like sand.

_Gabriel! Gabriel stop!_

But he couldn’t stop. He writhed in his seat, throwing his head back and moaning like a wounded animal. If that shape came closer he would tear it to pieces the way this pain had torn him— _slowly._

It didn’t come any closer.

—

Sam shut the door to the panic room, leaned against it and closed his eyes. He could hear Gabriel screaming on the other side.

He hadn’t expected this to be so hard. He’d known it was going to hurt, of course, but how could he have guessed that seeing Gabriel in pain would be this difficult? How could he have predicted the jolt he felt when the archangel had met his eye and hadn’t known him?

They had an hour before he had to administer the seventh dose. Sam had been flicking holy water on the archangel after every shot but this one, and each time it had seemed to hurt him the same. He had no idea how much longer he had to go. If it was even working at all.

No. It had to work. He had to get Gabriel back, and this was the only way any of them knew how. 

Sam couldn’t listen to the screaming anymore. He made his way up to the main part of the house, cracked open a beer and stared out the kitchen window. It was streaked and beaded with rain. The sky was dark with clouds and dusk. Sam sipped his beer.

After a little more than a half hour, he decided to go back and check on Gabriel, begin prepping the next dose. Hopefully he’d calmed down some.

Sam descended the stairs into the basement, and was greeted by silence. He tried to tell himself that was a good thing as he approached the panic room door, gripped the latch and prepared to haul it open.

“Sam…”

He froze. Gabriel’s voice was frail and cracked, but still he’d raised it enough to be heard through the saltsoaked iron.

 _How long has he been calling me?_ Sam swallowed around the lump in his throat. His hand shook slightly, palm slick with sudden sweat, as he pulled back the latch.

“Sam… Sammy… please, Sam…”

He didn’t _slam_ the door open—the clang of the metal was just loud.

Gabriel was slumped forward, his heavy chains the only things keeping him in the chair. His head lolled against his chest, and his breathing was coming in short, ragged bursts.

Sam was at his side in a second, clutching his face in his hands. Gabriel’s skin was ashen. His eyes, when he managed to open them, were dull and hollow. His mouth curved into a weak smile.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, hey, how’re you doing?” Sam brushed Gabriel’s hair out of his eyes, held his gaze, willed him to stay lucid.

“You heard me? Was callin’ you.”

“I… yeah,” Sam choked. “Yeah, I heard you, Gabe.”

Gabriel’s smile widened a little. He breathed out a laugh. “Gabe?”

“Uh…”

“S’nice, Sammy. I like it.”

Sam smiled back at him, though he supposed his was on the watery side. “Good. Okay. How’re you feeling, Gabe?”

The archangel closed his eyes. Sam’s gut twisted.

“Hey, hey no,” he shook him lightly. “Stay with me, open your eyes, come on!”

“Mmokay. Tired.”

“Open your _eyes,_ dammit!”

Gabriel did as he was told, slow and sleepy. His brows were knotted together, and he looked so fucking wounded that Sam almost forgot why he was doing this, almost forgot about his blackened Grace and the callous ease with which he’d slaughtered those angels. Gabriel was in pain, and he was confused, and he hadn’t asked for any of this.

“I know it hurts,” Sam said. “I know it’s hard. But we have to try and finish this, yeah? There’s only two more—”

“Sam,” Gabriel croaked. “Y’don’t have to convince me. I know.”

“I just wanna make sure—”

“Do it, Sam. Don’t wanna…” he shook his head. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

Sam took a deep breath, let his hands fall away from Gabriel’s face. He stood on legs that were the farthest thing from steady and made his way to the cooler to prepare another dose of blood.

“Whose is that, anyways?” Gabriel asked after a moment. His voice was a bit stronger than it had been a moment ago, and Sam took that as a good sign. “The blood.”

“Oh, uh, I don’t know.” Sam shrugged. “I repurposed some blood bank donations.”

“Fuck, Sam, really? Why didn’t you just take some from one of you guys?”

“I couldn’t ask the others,” Sam said, making his way to sit on the cot again. He set the syringe, now full, beside him. “They don’t know I’m doing this.”

“But… Cas and Bobby…”

“… Found the ritual, yeah. But they were, uh, a bit on the fence about using it. I mean, Bethael called you Lucifer’s successor. That doesn’t exactly sound like someone we should be saving.”

Gabriel didn’t say anything, only blinked at him with those soft amber eyes of his.

“They,” Sam sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “They figured we should wait until we know for sure what you’re turning into before we decided what to do with you. I’m supposed to be figuring that out and keeping an eye on you, that’s why I stayed behind.”

Gabriel shook his head, disbelief plain on his face. Still kept quiet.

Sam gnawed his bottom lip, fiddled with his hands. Let his gaze drop to where they sat in his lap and sighed again. “I’m pissed at you for what you did, Gabriel. But I don’t… I don’t think you’re beyond saving. Not yet. And I have to try before that stops being true.”

“Sam.”

The hunter’s eyes snapped up. Gabriel’s were narrowed at him, and in that moment Sam could see plainly that he and Castiel were brothers. He’d seen Cas level that same look at Dean many, many times.

“Sam,” Gabriel said again, “why didn’t you just use your own blood?”

“I don’t—”

“Tell me.”

Sam tried to keep his voice flat, tried to blink away the tears that stung his eyes. He wasn’t sure he succeeded, but he supposed it didn’t matter, in the end. It still hurt to tell the truth. But he felt he owed Gabriel the truth.

“The blood needed to be purified,” he said simply. “And I’m pretty sure it’ll take a hell of a lot more than a few ‘Hail Mary’s to purify what I’ve got in me.”

The archangel nodded slowly, dropped his gaze to the floor. They sat a few minutes in silence, and then it was time for the seventh injection.

Sam was gentler inserting the needle this time. “I’ve got you,” he said, one hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.

The angel inclined his head towards him, his cheek brushing against Sam’s knuckles as the taller man pressed down on the gun.

Gabriel’s body tensed, but he bit back his scream until it was nothing but a shrill whimper in the back of his throat. He threw his head back, his lips a tight line, his eyes screwed shut, his brow damp with sweat.

Sam drew the syringe out and stood in front of Gabriel, clutching both of his shoulders now. He babbled comforting nonsense, ached to pull the archangel closer and hold him as he rode this out. He knew, he could see that Gabriel was holding back for his sake, holding back the madness that had nearly overtaken him before. And he was doing a fine job of it, but oh, how it must’ve hurt.

Gabriel went slack, trembling. He opened his eyes, and Sam’s heart thudded leaden to see that they were red-rimmed and wet.

“Sam…” he murmured. There was a flash of light, and Sam frowned.

“Open your mouth,” he said. Gabriel did, and Sam wanted to cry.

Gabriel had bitten through his tongue. It was nothing that he couldn’t heal, but that wound had caused a spill of Grace inside his mouth, Grace that was still veined with black—almost moreso than it had been the other day.

Cas had said that the ritual worked in increments, that the closer they got to the end the less demonic the creature would become. Sam had guessed that the length of the ritual might be different for a half-demonic archangel than a run-of-the-mill blackeyes, but he had thought there would be some change, some progress, _something_ by the seventh injection.

“Y-you,” he stammered, “you’re not…”

Gabriel closed his mouth, his eyes. “Please,” he said, his voice choked with pain, “if it’s not working, Sammy, please just stop.”

“Yeah, hey, yeah.” Sam reached out a hand, let his fingers comb through the archangel’s hair. “We can stop. I’ll stop, Gabe, it’s over.”

He unshackled Gabriel then, and carried him over to the cot. It was just wide enough for the both of them. Sam tucked an arm under his and Gabriel’s heads, wrapped the other around his still-shuddering frame.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you, I’m staying, you’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

He wondered, as Gabriel’s breathing slowed and his body relaxed, whether or not that was true. He decided, as Gabriel curled into his embrace and murmured a half-conscious _thank you_ that ghosted against his lips _,_ that right now it didn’t really matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To quote myself: I have come to realize that I enjoy writing angst. I'm sorry. And I'd just like to thank Michaela Grey (or GreyMichaela) again for her fabulous beta work, and suffering through Gabe's torture. 
> 
> I'm sorry. 
> 
> No I'm not.


	6. before the final crack of dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens, and so does the sexual tension.

For the second time that week, Gabriel awoke in Sam’s arms. Every inch of him hurt, but the gentle heat of the other body in the bed made it oh so much easier to bear. The hunter was wrapped around him, his chin tucked over Gabriel’s hair and his fingers tracing absent patterns across his arms. The archangel tensed, hissed in a sharp breath, and Sam shifted to face him.

“How you doing?” he asked, his voice groggy and thick with sleep. He smiled.

Gabriel smiled back involuntarily. He was nearly trembling with the effort of fighting every one of his instincts, those that told him to rake his fingernails down Sam’s body til he bled, those that told him to run, to hide, to get away from Sam before he hurt him—and yet he couldn’t help but smile back.

“Is that a come-on, Sammoose?” He waggled his eyebrows.

Sam laughed, soft and breathy. “How’re you _feeling?”_

The hunter’s hands were still moving against him, and Gabriel wondered if Sam realized what he was doing. The warmth of him, the smile in his eyes, the gentleness of his touch, the featherlight brush of sour morning breath _…_ Gabriel wanted to melt into him, bury his face in Sam’s chest and never come out again. For the first time in a long time, the archangel felt something close to _safe._ But he wasn’t safe, and Sam wasn’t safe, and Gabriel knew he couldn’t let that feeling stick.

“Mfine,” he said. He wanted to shift out of Sam’s grasp, but the pain, though somewhat faded, still had him raw. “Sore.”

Sam frowned, and Gabriel felt as if he’d just turned off the sun. “I’m so sorry,” the young man murmured. His hand stilled, laid palmflat against the angel’s flesh.

“Ah, it’s not your fault, kiddo,” Gabriel said. “How were you supposed to know it wouldn’t work?”

“Still, I… fuck, it isn’t fair. All that for nothing.”

“You tried, though.” Gabriel resisted the urge to run a hand through Sam’s hair, to touch his face, kiss his mouth. “And that’s more than I can say for anyone else. Did it hurt? Yes. Am I pissed? No.”

A smile flickered across Sam’s face, settled under drawn brows. “Are you… are you _sure_ you’re a demon?”

Gabriel shrugged. “It comes and goes.”

Sam laughed, and Gabriel joined him. He liked Sam’s laugh—the way it bubbled out of him, lit up his eyes. It spread pleasant and warm in the angel’s chest, and Gabriel actually felt his heart ache a little. Ache for the boy that Sam had been before he’d fallen back into this life, bright and brilliant and too good for his fate. Too good for Gabriel the Debauched Archangel, and certainly too good for Gabriel the Devil.

His own laughter shook him, and as it shook it rattled the scorched parts of him and he bit it back, wincing. Sam sobered immediately.

“Shit, sorry.”

“N-not your fault.”

“I’m still _sorry.”_

Gabriel frowned. “You’re too fucking nice to me, Sam.”

“What d’you mean, too nice? I tortured you for seven hours.”

The archangel snickered. “Still better than you owe me.”

“I think you facing down Satan to save us more or less wiped the slate clean, Gabriel.”

“Yes, because that’s how that works, right? I do one good thing and suddenly everything else gets absolved. I still lied to you.”

“So tell me the truth now. What happened after you killed Lucifer?”

Gabriel sighed and told him. He watched Sam’s face, watched his eyes for something—not sure what. Disgust? Hate? Disappointment? Some kind of visceral _fuck you,_ because poisoned Grace built on the ugly things already within you, it didn’t create them from nothing. Gabriel had an explanation, not an excuse for what he was.

But Sam gave him none of that, and Gabriel couldn’t say whether or not he was glad of it. No, instead Sam chewed his lip and _thought._

“You’ve done awful things,” he said finally. “To us and to other people. But you still _saved the world_. And all this, everything you’ve done since then, has been because of Michael.” He gave a small smile. “I’m not _absolving_ you, Gabriel. But I am forgiving you.”

The archangel gaped at him. He felt like weeping, screaming, singing all at once. He settled for a shaky laugh. “See? Too fucking nice.”

The hunter laughed with him again. There was a moment’s pause, then Sam’s expression softened and he gathered Gabriel in his arms, pulling them flush against each other and nuzzling the archangel’s hair.

Gabriel stiffened a moment, but then Sam’s hands were on his back and he relaxed into his touch, into the heat of him.

“Not any nicer than you deserve,” Sam said, and Gabriel didn’t want him to hear the lump in his throat so he answered by pressing his lips to the taller man’s collarbone.

Sam sighed deeply at that, kissed the top of Gabriel’s head. He paused, then did it again. Pulled away slightly and slid down his body, trailing kisses over the archangel’s brow, across his face, lightly along his jaw… Gabriel’s breath hitched as Sam caught his mouth, soft and undemanding.

It was almost innocent—almost, until the hunter’s hands traced hot paths down to Gabriel’s ass and made him moan into Sam’s mouth. Sam was devouring him then, rough and wild and desperate. Gabriel whined, bucked his hips into him and gasped at the answering heat he found there. Sam held him fast, grinding against the angel slow and rough.

He broke the kiss and let his mouth fall to Gabriel’s throat again, nipping the soft flesh just beneath his jawline. The angel hissed in a breath, his fingers digging into Sam’s sides.

 _“Sammy,”_ he whimpered. Fuck, he was hard—

There came a pounding against the panic room door, and the two of them practically leapt apart. Sam tumbled off the cot in a tangle of gawky limbs, and Gabriel guessed that, under any other circumstances, he would have laughed.

“Sam!”

That would be Dean, calling from the other side of the door. “Sam, you in there?”

“I’m here, Dean!”

Gabriel was more than a little proud to hear the rasp in Sam’s voice, to see him have to adjust himself as he stood.

“I thought,” he murmured, “you said you’d kill me if I kissed you again?”

Sam looked at him, brows drawn and eyes wide beneath, but he didn’t have a chance to answer before Dean came in and whisked his brother out of the room. Didn’t even spare Gabriel a second glance.

As the iron slammed shut, the archangel rolled onto his back and let out a low, breathy, _“Fuck”._

—

“And we—Sam, are you listening to me?”

Sam was. He was listening, but he was also doing his best to relax his body after it had been so rudely interrupted in its pursuit of satisfaction.

_You’re just hiding a boner; calm down, Winchester._

“Yeah, Dean. Sorry, keep talking.”

Dean blinked, and Sam knew his brother wasn’t going to stop worrying that thread. Thankfully, he at least put it on the backburner.

They were all sitting in the living room, the Winchester boys, Bobby, and Castiel. Sam had felt a stab of panic at first, seeing the others returned caked in too much blood to be healthy, but for the most part they seemed to be all right.

“We took out the garrison,” Dean said, “but, uh… turns out that might not’ve been the smartest move.”

“What? Why not?”

“The town they were in,” Bobby muttered. “They _loved_ them. Said they’d been freaked out at first, but the angels saved ‘em from a flock of demons that’d started fuckin’ up the place.”

“We only barely escaped,” Cas said, eyes narrowed at nothing.

“They were gearin’ up to lynch us straight-out,” Bobby added.

Sam ran his hands over his face, rubbed into his eyes. “Shit. So what, that’s their big plan? Make us roll over willingly?”

“Looks like.”

“But,” Dean said, “there’s more. You remember that Beth chick saying that Gabriel was Lucifer’s… replacement or whatever? We, ah, we _asked_ one of the angels what that was about. According to her, Chuckles down there? He’s been sending out demons to commit mass murder ever since Lucifer died. And the angel garrisons came down to stop ‘em.”

Sam frowned. “But he’s been with us since—oh. Oh, fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, _fuck.”_

Cas looked so damn tired. “We believe one of the high-profile angels may be in league with Hell. Or at least factions of Hell. They’re working together to keep the war going.” 

“And Gabriel’s their scapegoat.” Sam’s nails bit sharp into his palm. “He told me… he told me what happened. Michael was the one who poisoned his Grace. This was Michael’s _backup plan.”_

Dean’s jaw twitched. “Motherfucker. That chicken-winged mother _fucker._ ”

“So… now what?” Bobby stood, paced the length of the living room. “We just traded one evil archangel for another, and our biggest asset is chained up in the basement, goin’ that way himself.”

“Gabriel is _not_ our biggest asset, okay?” Dean snapped. “We don’t need him. We can figure this out ourselves.”

“Son, we are capable of a lotta things, but I ain’t sure stopping Michael’s one of them.”

Cas sighed. “It’s true. He’s got Heaven and parts of Hell on his side. Not to mention he’s one of the most powerful beings in existence. Gabriel is our best chance against him.”

“So, what, we’re just supposed to let him loose? Cas, you said yourself that poisoned Grace is basically what made Lucifer _Lucifer,_ right? We can’t trust him like this. Hell, we could barely trust him in the first place.”

“What about that blood ritual we found?” Bobby asked. “I know we said we should wait, but it looks like that ain’t an option no more.”

Sam’s gut knotted. “Uh. That won’t work.”

The lot of them turned to face him at once.

“What makes you say that?” Dean’s eyes narrowed.

“I… uh. I may have tried it. While you were gone. It didn’t work, he—he’s still poisoned.”

“You—dammit, Sammy, _that’s_ what you were doing down there?”

“… Yeah.” _And that’s_ all _I was doing down there._

“Sam, you can’t just—”

“Look, I know, could you spare me the lecture please?” Sam shook his head. “Like I said, it didn’t work anyways.”

“He could’ve hurt you!”

“The room was warded!”

“That doesn’t…” Dean shook his head, tight lipped. “Aw, shit.”

Sam sighed. “I’m sorry I went behind your back, Dean. But I had to try it. I—even now, I think he’s still… in there, y’know? And I saw his Grace, I know for sure he’s not completely poisoned.”

“What does that matter? He’s _gonna_ be, soon enough.”

Sam set his teeth, looked pointedly at his shoes. He knew that. He knew that he couldn’t stop the poison from spreading, couldn’t save Gabriel from turning into his late brother. He knew that it was stupid, oh, so incredibly stupid, to get hung up on the wellbeing of a fallen archangel who’d likely turn on them as soon as they defeated Michael—if he even lasted that long.

But Gabriel had eyes like the sun and kissed like he meant it and Sam wasn’t sure he’d be able to forget that anytime soon.

—

Gabriel had considered, briefly, whether or not he should just take care of his erection himself. He decided against it, in no small part due to the fact that the warding on the room was limiting his powers, and he didn’t much relish the idea of Sam or anyone else walking in on him covered in his own dried come.

So he thought about blood rituals and beached whales and calmed the damn thing down.

Afterwards he’d tried to listen to whatever was going on upstairs, but it appeared that the blaze of Enochian sigils had limited his earshot as well. Other than a few garbled shouts every now and again, there wasn’t much to be heard.

What felt like hours later, the panic room door squealed open and Sam stepped back inside.

“Hey, Gigantor,” Gabriel called from where he lay on the cot. “What’s shakin’?”

“Have you… have you not moved since I left?”

“Pfft. I’ve _moved._ I just… happen to have moved back into this same position. Again.”

Sam sat on the edge of the cot, placed an absent hand on the archangel’s shin. “That bad, huh?”

“Feel better than I did when I woke up, at least.” Gabriel offered an empty smile. “One day at a time, Sambo.”

“I’m—”

“If you tell me you’re sorry one more time, I’m gonna strangle you.”

Sam’s mouth twitched. “Fine. Not sorry, then.”

They sat a moment in silence. The hunter gave a tight smile, patted Gabriel’s leg and seemed to draw up into himself, hunching like a grouchy teenager.

“So,” he said, “we, ah, we figured some stuff out.”

He told Gabriel about the purpose behind the angels’ descent, about the demons and the framing and the Michael of it all. Gabriel nodded, dug fingernails into the creases of his palms, felt the dull, pinching crack of his teeth as he ground them together.

“Asshole,” was all he could bring himself to say.

“We have to stop him, Gabriel.”

“‘S’at why you came down to see me, then? Help us, Gabriel Kenobi, you’re our only hope?”

“That’s not…”

“Sam.” Pain skittered hot and piercing down the archangel’s spine as he hoisted himself up on his elbows, turned so his back was up against the wall. He met the younger Winchester’s eye. “Whatever you did to me, it didn’t work but it… it cleared my head. I don’t feel the poison as much. But that isn’t gonna last long.”

He willed Sam to understand. He didn’t want to have to say it, so he poured every thought that was running screaming through his brain into his stare, praying to his Father that it would get through. _I can’t go with you, Sam. I’m going to be what I was on the island, and you won’t be able to pull me back a second time. Don’t give me a chance to hurt you._

Sam only blinked at him. Fuck, and he was supposed to be the smart one.

Gabriel spoke in a small voice. “I… I can’t do it safe, Sam. Not if I want to keep myself… okay.”

“I know,” Sam said. “That’s why I’m not asking you to go.”

Anger flared, blistering and blurred, in Gabriel’s chest. “The fuck you’re not. You _need me,_ Sambo, you aren’t gonna kill Michael without me. You can’t.”

“We can try.”

“Well, you’re gonna _die,_ then!”

“Probably, yeah!” Sam dug his fingers into Gabriel’s shin, and it was far from a gentle squeeze. “But I’m _not_ going to ask you to do that for us. If you do it… it has to be because you want to.”

 _Or you’ll turn on us as soon as the poison spreads deeper._ Gabriel could hear the unfinished thought like an echo. Sam would never admit it, but he knew it was there. He didn’t care about whether or not Gabriel went full-Hellfire, so long as he took Michael down in the process. Which was fine, he swore it was fine—he just wished Sam didn’t have to pretend it wasn’t true.

“Hell,” Gabriel muttered. “Way to guilt-trip me, kiddo. I never said I wasn’t _gonna._ ”

“I’m not trying—”

Gabriel held up a hand. “S’okay, Sam. I’ll do it. It’s fine. Michael needs to be stopped, and my Dad knows you can’t do it alone.” _But I can. Which means you’re not coming, because I’m not gonna be the one who lets you die._

Sam gave a shaky smile. He looked down at the angel’s leg, gave it another squeeze—this one much more tender. His hand began to move, slid over and up to Gabriel’s thigh. Then he seemed to think better of it and settled on the knee with a pat.

“About earlier—”

“Ehh, don’t.” Gabriel shook his head, voice tight. “Let’s not make this awkward, okay? We don’t have to… discuss. Things. If you don’t want to.”

Sam’s eyes were fixed on his hand where it sat on Gabriel’s knee. “Are you…” he swallowed, and Gabriel tried not to watch the bob of his Adam’s apple, the curve of his long neck. “Are you saying that ‘cause you think I don’t want to, or because you don’t?”

“I…” _Don’t tempt me, don’t do it, this is_ not _a good idea…_

“Gabe.” Sam’s gaze snapped up to meet his. “I do.”

_Fuck it._

Gabriel dove forward and kissed him, hard and sloppy and _fuck_ the pain in his back, fuck everything, because Sam’s hands were on his face, in his hair, and in that moment nothing else mattered.

The hunter bit, sucked at his lip, dragged back slow and broke away. He used that split-second to grip the hem of Gabriel’s shirt, pull it up to his armpits and let his mouth fall on the angel’s nipple. Gabriel hissed in a breath and let his head fall back as Sam teased him with teeth and tongue, as his hands ran up and down his bare sides and patterned him in gooseflesh. His legs parted and Sam repositioned himself so he was kneeling between them, his feet falling off the edge of the cot.

Gabriel raised his arms and though it took Sam a split-second to take the hint, soon his shirt was completely off and Sam was nipping at his neck, his shoulder, his collarbone... He bit and sucked the marks, pulling purple blooms out of the angel’s skin. And Gabriel’s hand was tangled in his hair, tugging gently and not-so-gently, swallowing soft curses with every indrawn breath.

The archangel’s other hand was popping the button on Sam’s jeans and tugging down the front of his underwear, gripping his half-hard length and gently thumbing the head of his cock. Sam moaned against Gabriel’s throat, dug his teeth in a little harder.

The archangel began stroking him, slow, teasing pulls and the occasional swipe across his slit. Sam took his face in his hands, kissed him hard, breathlessly. Broke away and rested their foreheads together.

“Gabe…” he hissed. He bucked once into Gabriel’s hand as the angel picked up speed, his hands tightening in fists in the shorter man’s hair. _“Shit,_ Gabe.”

“Got you, Sammy, I got you.”

“Close, _fuck,_ M’close…”

“Just let go, Sam… I’ve got you right here, c’mon, let it out…”

Gabriel leaned forward, pressed a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth _so fucking gentle, too gentle._ He did it again, this time taking care to bite. Sam’s breath was warm and ragged, and on an impulse the archangel nipped him again in time with one last hard tug on his cock.

That was it. Sam was coming into his hand in hot pulses, moaning deep and low into his mouth. He broke their kiss with a soft pop and dropped his head into the crook of Gabriel’s neck, mouthing his throat. The taller man was shaking as he rode the aftershocks of his orgasm. And oh, Gabriel was hard, achingly hard himself but it was so _sweet_ to see Sam undone in his arms. He dropped a kiss to the top of the young man’s shaggy head.

“So good, Sammy, did so good,” he muttered into his hair.

Sam’s shuddering stopped, his breathing slowed. He kissed Gabriel’s neck, once, twice, down his throat and over his collarbone, his chest, sliding down until he was kneeling on the floor and his mouth was ghosting over the tent in Gabriel’s pants. Still lustblown eyes met Gabriel’s, and Sam smirked, fucking _smirked_ at him.

“Sam, what’re you—”

He hissed, eyes widening. Sam was popping the button on Gabriel’s pants with his _teeth._

The hunter tugged Gabriel’s jeans and boxers down, down and completely off, leaving the archangel naked, flushed and leaking precome onto his belly. Sam placed his hands on his thighs, pushing them farther apart.

Then he leaned forward and licked a stripe from the base of Gabriel’s cock to the tip, and Gabriel couldn’t process much else after that.

Sam took his cock into his mouth, sucking him slow. His tongue teased Gabriel’s slit and the angel moaned, he moaned and he arched his back, his hands forming whiteknuckled fists in the sheets. 

“Fucking hell, Sammy, _Sammy…_ Feels so good, Sam, so fucking good…”

Sam hummed, and the vibrations were like lightning. Gabriel felt his abs tighten, and Sam’s hands were running firm and slow across his thighs as they began to tremble. The build was electric and cold and Sam’s mouth was so warm, so wet, so fucking _soft—_

The hunter pulled off, and Gabriel let out a sharp whine at the sudden rush of cool air.

“Gabriel,” Sam growled. “Gabe, look at me.”

The angel obeyed, his breath hitching in his throat.

“Eyes on me, okay?” Sam licked his lips, and _fuck,_ it should not have been possible for him to look both so predatory and so earnest all at once. The angel’s cock twitched at the sight of him. “Okay?”

Gabriel nodded. “Okay.”

Sam grinned. He wrapped his mouth around the angel’s head, sucking _just_ there and digging his fingers into Gabriel’s thighs hard enough to bruise, and that there was all it took to send him over the edge.

Gabriel arched his back and froze, moaning Sam’s name as he came in the hunter’s mouth. Sam swallowed him down, his grip on his legs softening, turning to gentle, soothing rubs. The archangel was trembling, loose and boneless, and Sam pulled away from his leaking cock, pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh and murmured sweet nonsense against the tender flesh.

And his eyes, his eyes, all green and gold and _beautiful—_ they never left Gabriel’s.       

When at last the angel was breathing easy again, Sam crawled onto the cot and curled around him, his gangling limbs pulling Gabriel towards him.

Gabriel buried his face in Sam’s chest, closed his eyes, breathed in the scent of him. This was it, he knew. This was all they were going to get to have.

Might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That… ah… that was my first time writing smut without outside help. Be gentle. 
> 
> ...
> 
> (That's what she said.)


	7. and everything is stunted and lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterglow's a bitch sometimes.

Dean was still reluctant to put his trust in what would soon be a demon, but Gabriel was offering and hey, who was he to stop an archangel from agreeing to solve all their problems? At least that was his stance when Sam emerged from the basement that evening. He guessed that Dean hadn’t arrived at that conclusion alone.

“Where’s Cas and Bobby?” he asked, upon finding the living room empty save for his brother.

“Napping, bless their fragile little hearts.” Dean grinned and sucked at the mouth of his beer bottle. “So how’s Feathers, feeling up to the job?”

“He says he’ll do it.” Sam kept his voice even, sat down on Bobby’s couch with a soft _whump._ “Now all _we_ gotta do is find Michael.”

“That’s done. You remember I said I _asked_ that angel about the whole demons, Gabriel thing? I asked her where Michael was, too. Apparently he’s stationed in this small town in Maine—some place called Jacobston. About a day and a bit’s drive, if we don’t stop.”

Dean took another swig, and Sam watched him, mouth twitching tight. He saw how relaxed his brother was, knew that his calm was just a thin veneer plastered over coiled energy and heat. Sam felt a sudden irrational urge to crack that calm, to look Dean in the eye and tell him— _I just had sex with an archangel._ Because that was a huge, looming thing that had just happened and Sam still couldn’t quite believe it himself.

_I gave the Archangel Gabriel a blowjob and then we cuddled._  

And he was—God help him—he was happy about it.

He shouldn’t have been happy. Sleeping with Gabriel would’ve been a stupid idea under the best of circumstances, and these circumstances were about as far from the best as they could hope to get. And the archangel was changing. He was vulnerable and volatile and Sam couldn’t say for certain whether the sex would have happened if he weren’t. Oh, there had been something between them before Gabriel’s poisoning—tentative and unspoken but undoubtedly _there,_ seeded in raw looks and too-easy smiles. But Sam had never wanted to—never dreamed they would—act on it. Not until he’d seen the pain Gabriel had gone through, was going through, was _willing_ to go through on their behalf. Good, for all his wicked ways. Sam felt for him, and Sam felt he understood him, and Sam felt he liked him far too much to keep holding back.

Still, he couldn’t chalk it all up to circumstance. After all, Gabriel was funny. He was funny and sharp and theatrical and _luminous,_ and Sam had wanted him for far too long.

Maybe letting himself be happy about it wasn’t too outrageous after all.

“Sam?” Dean cocked his head. “You okay, dude? You look out of it.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I spaced out.”

Dean made a face. “Yeah, you’ve been doin’ that a lot today. Something you wanna tell me?”

Sam worried his thumbnail between his teeth, kept his eyes down. He wondered if all older brothers had the ability to make their siblings feel transparent as glass, or if that was just a Dean thing. 

“No,” he said. “Just a little… distracted. All that’s been going on lately, it’s a lot to process, y’know?”

Dean laughed, short and quiet. “Yeah, I know.” He took another swig of beer, swallowed and smacked his lips. “That ain’t all, though, Sammy. And normally I’d say you don’t have to tell me, but considerin’ your track record lately…”

“I get it.” Sam hoped the look he shot his brother was as dirty as he intended. “But, ah, trust me. You don’t wanna know what’s on my mind right now.”

“I think I do, Sam. You can tell me, man—it can’t be any worse than Ruby, right?” He said it with another laugh, but there was a tension to his smile that made Sam’s heart ache. That made him want to hit back and prove Dean wrong.

“No, it’s not,” he said slowly. “It’s actually… kinda great. I think.”

Dean’s brow furrowed. “Great? Uh… great. What does that mean?”

“It means I’m actually feeling good today, Dean, and it’s none of your business why.”

“Yeah, good and distracted, and right before we have to go stop an egomaniacal archangel from taking over the world. Sam, if your head’s not in the game, it _is_ my business. This is big league, eleventh hour crap, I need to know how you’re doing—we _all_ do.”

Sam clenched his teeth, because _goddammit_ he had a point. He sighed, because even though the satisfaction of telling Dean _exactly_ what he’d done was oh, so very tempting, he knew it would cause a shitstorm that he wasn’t one hundred percent ready to face.

But Dean wasn’t going to let up, he knew. And the longer he waited the worse it would be when the truth finally came out.

The words fell from his lips in a tumbling rush, too fast for him to pull them back.

“I fucked Gabriel.”

He winced, because it sounded _off_ when he said it like that. It made the act sound impersonal and harsh, which was inaccurate and certainly too blunt for what should have been a delicate confession. To his brother. His brother who was now staring at him with his beerslick mouth open and his eyes uncomfortably wide.

“You… _what?”_

“We had sex,” Sam said, and that sounded… better.

Dean gaped like a landed fish, put his beer on the coffee table and stood up. He’d never admit it, but it was a parent thing—he had to loom over Sam when he scolded him.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. His voice was dangerously level even as he gesticulated wildly, as was his Deanish wont. “You watched Gabriel slaughter most of an angel garrison. You saw _with your own eyes_ that his Grace is poisoned, that he’s turning into a demon—into a new Satan. You tried to _cure_ him, and it didn’t work.” He stilled, arms outstretched, and met Sam’s eye. “… And then you _fucked him.”_

Sam’s mouth drew into a thin line and he tilted his head at his brother. Dared him to keep pushing, because he wasn’t going to explain himself unless Dean put up a fight. “That’s about the long and short of it, yeah.”

“What the hell is _wrong_ with you?”

“I like guys, is that a problem?” It wasn’t, he knew it wasn’t, but he really didn’t want to talk about what the problem actually _was._

Dean ran a hand over his face. “You _know_ that’s not what I mean, Sammy. Don’t change the fucking subject, okay? I couldn’t care less whether you… y’know. But dude… are you fucking _kidding me?_ You’re screwing another freakin’ demon!”

“He’s not—”

“He’s as good as! And… _fuck,_ Sam, even if he wasn’t, it’s _Gabriel._ Yeah, he’s helped us, but he ain’t exactly Little Miss Perfect. We’re working with him because he’s useful, _not_ because we trust him.”

“Well, I _do_ trust him!” Sam spat it like the answer to a challenge, more venom than sincerity.

Dean gave him that look, that look that was in part incredulous, in part personally offended that his brother had disagreed with him.

“Do you?” he asked. “Do you _really_ , Sam?”

Now wasn’t that a good question. Because Sam wanted to, oh, how he wanted to trust Gabriel. But Gabriel was chaos and blood as sure as he was sunlight and Grace, both with and without the poison. Empathy couldn’t outweigh that, nor could want.

But Dean was _looking_ at him and he couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t let him win.

“Yes.” Sam squared his jaw. “I do.”

“This isn’t a good thing, for fuck’s sake!”

Sam stood abruptly, watching Dean take a stumbling step back with a furious satisfaction.

“It could’ve been,” he growled. “It _was_ , for a second there. But, hey, I guess I forgot that I’m not allowed to have one scrap of happiness for _five fucking minutes!”_

“Sam…”

“No, Dean, just shut up and listen. It happened, and I’m happy about it. And that’s a good thing.” He stared at his brother a moment, letting his words hang between them. “Now, I don’t know if it’s gonna happen again. Probably not. All this bullshit with Michael…” Sam shook his head. “But either way, you’re gonna let me have this, okay? Just this.”

Dean squared his jaw, let his eyes go hard, and Sam’s heart broke a little. He’d known Dean wouldn’t like it. He knew he had no reason to like it, and every reason to tear Sam a new one, traipse downstairs and break his hand on Gabriel’s jaw. Still, he’d hoped—unreasonably, probably—that he’d be able to keep this one brittle piece of sweetness without the world trying to drag him back to bitter. 

“Y’know what, do whatever you want,” Dean muttered, and then Sam was alone.

—

The door creaked open, and the holy fire flickered. Gabriel was sprawled on the cot, trying to keep still so as not to exacerbate the pain, which had begun slowly creeping back since Sam had left his side. Post-coital cuddling did wonders to distract from bloodburned insides, almost more effective than the coitus itself.

Sam stepped into the panic room, and Gabriel felt his mouth curl into a lazy smile.

“Hey, Sambo.”

Sam smiled back, but it was distracted. Dropped eyes, shaggy brown head dipping. The hunter stood over the cot, his hands twitching at his sides.

“You feeling any better?” he mumbled.

“Not a bit,” Gabriel said dryly. “And yourself, Mushmouth? What’s up with you?”

Sam bunched his shoulders, like a shrug frozen halfway. “Mmokay.”

“Like hell you are.” He extended a hand towards the taller man, his fingertips brushing against Sam’s leg. “Sammy.”

“I—”

_“Sam.”_

His voice was hard and ancient, and Sam’s eyes snapped up at the tone. It wasn’t a command, but it was everything short of one.

And Sam was just looking back at him, unimpressed.

The hunter jerked his leg out of Gabriel’s reach. “We need you in fighting shape as soon as possible. Dean says he knows where Michael is.”

Gabriel was unprepared for the cold spike in his gut at the sudden space between them. For that sharp, needling hurt coupled with a dull anger thick in his throat. _My Sam not fair you’re my Sam._

Something of that must have registered on his face, for when he looked up at Sam next, the young man’s green eyes were aching.

“We’re not getting out of this in one piece,” he said. “You know that. I’m glad we… did what we did, but it’d be stupid to get attached.”

Gabriel’s fingers curled into a fist. He smiled up at Sam again, his mouth tight. “Is that what you think this is?” he asked quietly.

Sam’s brow furrowed. Gabriel laughed, and the sound was sour. “You know it stopped hurting, when we fucked. I’m in _pain,_ Sam, and you just so happen to be some quality morphine. That’s all.”

And oh, the effects of the poison might’ve waned some, but it was almost obscene how much he reveled in the hurt that flared in Sam’s eyes.

“Gabriel…”

“Look, kiddo, if you’re not gonna get me off again, you might as well fuck off back upstairs. I’ll need my rest if I’m gonna be murdering another one of my brothers in the near future.”

Sam breathed out once, and then there was a twist of cool air as he turned on his heel and left. Gabriel stared up at the ceiling and wished he could bring himself to cry.

—

Sam didn’t go down to the panic room again, and when the time came to leave it was Castiel who fetched his brother for the car.

Gabriel could feel the effects of the blood ritual seeping from his bones as they drove to Maine. The farther removed he was from the protective sigils in Bobby’s basement, the fouler he felt.

He had tried to convince the boys to let him zap them all straight to Jacobston, but they’d been dead set against it. They tried to rationalize, something about constipation and One Last Roadtrip, but Gabriel saw the fear swarming beneath their words like worms—they needed a getaway, and they didn’t think he’d be coming back with them.

They were probably right.

His plan, ever since Sam had revealed Michael’s endgame to him, had been to let the Winchesters and their merry band of idiots get halfway to their destination before flitting away. Keep Sam safe. Keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Feel free to just let everything he had loose on the brother who’d tried to ruin him for possession of their Father’s finest rock. Then, when it was all over, he could fling himself into the Pit and rule Hell for the rest of eternity. Maybe redecorate.

But Sam didn’t want to play anymore. Dean hated his guts. Bobby too, probably. Castiel didn’t say much but Castiel didn’t need to say anything for Gabriel to know how he felt. How _disappointed_ he was.

It wasn’t worth it to protect them. They didn’t give a fuck about him, why should he bother? So they could come and watch as Gabriel eviscerated Michael, ripped his pretty wings to pieces in a blaze of burning Grace. They could watch as Gabriel made that final leap from _half-demon_ to _Devil_ and if they so happened to get out of his way, bully for the Winchesters. He wouldn’t bother going after them.

He mightn’t have even bothered with the drive if he hadn’t needed decoys for his assault. And if he hadn’t felt like shit.

A few hours into the drive, Castiel—sandwiched between Gabriel and Bobby—turned to him.

“How are you feeling?” the ex-angel asked. His voice was like gravel in Gabriel’s ear and Gabriel had the sudden urge to duct tape his brother’s mouth shut again.

“Fine.”

“You look pale.”

“Oh, for fuck’s—I’m _fine,_ Cas.”

Castiel visibly recoiled. Gabriel’s lip curled. “Oh no, am I being rude, Cassie? Tch, I’m sorry.”

Blue eyes narrowed, and Gabriel felt a bolt of perverse glee shoot through him. “Oh-ho! Did I wake the beast? C’mon, little brother. Now that your sorry self’s been booted off the God Squad, let’s see how tough you are without—”

“Shut the _fuck up,_ Gabriel!” Dean roared. His knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel. “Or I swear to your father I will pull over and _stake_ your ass.”

Castiel was tense at his side, anger and hurt barely contained between the cracks in his cool expression. It didn’t take much for Gabriel to determine that the other inhabitants of the car were in the same state. No one would make a move, he knew. Not so long as they were in an enclosed space with an irate, poisoned Gabriel. But the air was heavy and sour with how much they hated him, and he found himself relishing in it. There was a sort of power in earning hatred. It meant he had his hooks in them, meant he could hurt them as he wished.

A thought occurred, and Gabriel reached out with his mind, tendrils of thought slipping through the cracks and warping the space to his design. The car kept moving, but all but he and Sam were muffled, swathed in cotton and smoke.

“Hey, Sam,” he said, “I know we joked about this on the island, but in all seriousness: does Dean know just how stellar your blowjobs are?”

_“Gabriel!”_

“Relax, idiot, they can’t hear us. But truly— _real_ nice job, kiddo. Don’t think I’ve come that hard since Kali tried that thing with the—”

“Stop it,” Sam said, quiet and harsh. “Please, just stop. I know it’s not you, Gabriel, I know you’re just…”

“Not me?” Gabriel curled a lip. “I think you’re starting to romanticize a bit, Sam. Was I or was I not the guy who repeatedly murdered your brother to teach you a lesson?”

Sam turned around in his seat, glared. “You’re also the guy who killed your _own_ brother to save the world. You set out to help us afterwards, and you…” he shook his head, and his eyes were pleading. “I know you don’t want to be this. You’re more than the poison, Gabe. You’re more than the dark parts of you.”

Something twinged in Gabriel’s chest, some surge of grateful affection. But it was gone as quickly as it came, buried by apathy and a desire to make those puppy eyes bleed. He laughed, and the sound was cold.

“The best part is,” he chuckled, “I think you might actually believe that.”

Sam’s jaw twitched, and he turned back to face the road. Gabriel rolled his eyes and dissolved the magic that surrounded them. _I could make you cry,_ he thought, staring at the back of Sam’s head. _I could rip you to pieces and it wouldn’t make you want me again._

_Again, if you ever did, you worthless piece of shit._

—

Even if they hadn’t seen Jacobston’s welcome sign—a garish yellow thing with a kitschy anthropomorphic fish waving _hello_ —Sam would’ve known the angelic outpost for what it was. The forest around the town was steeped in a heavy, sickish air, Enochian symbols were scratched into trees, and there was no sign of animal life whatsoever. The road was covered in ash and scorch marks. The whole place had been burned in a particularly heavenly way—overwhelming everything within a six-mile radius.

Dean brought the car to a halt before the sign, eyeing the damage extending beyond it.

“So they’ll definitely know we’re here if we go any farther,” he said. “But we should be good for now so long as we stay here, right?”

“The patrols won’t bother much with this entrance, but it’ll be warded to let them know when somebody _does_ show up so they can send out the welcome wagon,” Gabriel drawled. “Michael _wants_ people to come in, he wants to add people to this fucked up little commune he’s got going on. He doesn’t want it to look like a garrison.”

“You sure?” Dean met the archangel’s eye in the rear view mirror.

“I know my brother,” Gabriel snapped, “and it’s my ass, too. I’m sure, dipshit.”

Sam balled fists against his thighs. Grit his teeth so hard he feared they might crack. This was it. This was their last stand—one last chance to put an end to all this Heaven and Hell bullshit. They could pull it off, too. No guarantee they’d make it out alive, but they might be able to bring Heaven crashing down around their ears.

But Gabriel was their ace in the hole, and Gabriel couldn’t be trusted. So _might_ remained the operative word.

They made camp on the side of the road, Dean having eased the Impala into the underbrush. It was the night before the island all over again—the five of them crammed into the car, drowning their pre-battle anxieties in cold gas station pizza and lukewarm gas station beer. None of them spoke. Only toasted each other with nods and pregnant looks. Rather, Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Bobby did so. Gabriel watched their behaviour with a cool eye, expression caught somewhere between a sneer and flat boredom.

Sam tried to ignore him. Him and the steady ache that hollowed Sam’s chest every time he looked at him. For a moment there had been something there, something more than just weighted glances and a good rapport. For a moment…

Sam shook his head. Wouldn’t let himself think it. Couldn’t.

The others filtered off to bed—rather, the reclined seats—one by one, until just Sam and Castiel were left. They were sitting on the hood of the car, staring at the black stretch of road and forest before them. Saying nothing, barely acknowledging one another, as they always did. Each other’s presence was enough.

“Cas,” Sam murmured, hating the way the silence shattered around his ears. “There’s got to be another way to get that poison out.”

Castiel sighed. “None that will be of any benefit to you, Sam. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but Gabriel is beyond help. One more taste of blood and he’ll be completely irretrievable.”

“And what about ways that won’t be of any benefit to me?”

“Sam…”

“Tell me.”

Cas shifted at Sam’s side. “Why do you care so much?”

“He’s…” Sam chewed his lip. “I can’t believe that he’s beyond help. I wasn’t. I am nine kinds of fucked up—my blood might as well be as poisoned as his, and it’s been that way since I was six months old. If Gabriel’s beyond help, then so am I. But he’s _not._ There’s good in there, there’s always been.” He shrugged. “And maybe I’m just… projecting, maybe I’m just looking for something that’s not there. But he’s been good to me. I… I like him. Probably more than I should. I sincerely think he can be saved. Maybe I need to know that he can be.”

Quiet swelled heavy between them again. Sam watched the shadow that was Castiel, tried to suss out an answer from the outline of his face in the dark.

Finally, the ex-angel spoke again. “There’s… one other way.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Someone could take the poison from him… take it into themselves. If one were to break the skin of that first entry wound, one could theoretically draw out the poison.”

Sam’s gut twisted. “And… what would happen to whoever did that?”

“If it were an angel,” Castiel said slowly, “they’d become corrupted like Gabriel, but at a much faster rate. If it were a human… well. That's never happened before, but it would almost certainly kill them. You don’t have a Grace to corrupt—the poison would destroy you. Sam.” Castiel put a hand on the hunter’s arm. “Promise me you won’t.”

Sam snorted softly. “It’d destroy Dean.”

“Well, yes. But for your own sake—don’t.”

Sam sighed. “Thanks, Cas.”

He slid off the hood of the Impala and returned to his seat. Castiel followed not long after.

When they woke the next morning, Gabriel was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO THIS IS STILL A THING. 
> 
> I apologize and grovel at thy feet.


End file.
